Orange line drawing of a phoenix with outstretched wings and long trailing tail feathers, shown as a tattoo design on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix with spread wings

Colour · Flash

The image shows a stylised phoenix drawn in orange outline, with wings spread wide and a crested head. The linework is tapered and varies in thickness, with feathers drawn as flowing strokes that extend into long tail plumes at the bottom. The design is a single flat colour on a white background, with no shading or fill.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The oven went out on Tuesday, the big brick one Dad built in 1971 and swore would outlast the street. I came in at four to find the flue cold and the dough sitting in a room that smelled of wet ash. Mr Okafor from the chemist's next door had been up since three with a bucket, and he looked at me as if I were the one who'd done it.

Here is the odd part. Under the soot, the firebricks at the back were still warm, and when I knelt to rake them I found a scatter of embers the size of barley grains, still glowing orange, as if someone had hidden them there on purpose. I fed them kindling one stick at a time until a flame came back into the mouth of the oven. By half five the loaves were going in and the window had started to grey over the bus shelter.

Dad used to say a bakery is only a fire that agreed to behave. He never wrote anything down, so I can't check. Still, I stood there with the peel in my hands and watched the first tray of cobs blister and rise, and I thought of you, of the row we had in March, and how neither of us has opened the other's post since.

Come on Saturday. The oven is lit and there is more than enough dough. I'll leave the back door on the latch and the kettle on, and if you want to be angry with me over the rye, you may do it while it is still warm.

Love, Jo