Colour phoenix tattoo with black outlines, purple and pink wings and a blue tail, surrounded by black stars on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix with stars on the back

Back · Mixed · Photo

A phoenix with spread wings and a crested head sits at the centre of the design, with its tail feathers trailing down. Bold black linework forms the outline and the bird's body, with stylised, tribal-like detailing on the wings. The wings are filled with purple and pink, the lower body and tail with blue, and small black stars scatter around the bird against a pale skin background.

Back Phoenix Bird Star Wing Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind over the pass has teeth, and you are halfway up the scree with your collar turned up and your lantern unlit, because the sky still holds a bruise of violet above the ridge. Behind you the shepherd's hut is a grey smudge on the slope. Ahead, Mother Ruth's lead ewe has bolted again, and her bell keeps tolling somewhere in the rocks, faint as a coin dropped down a well.

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Your grandmother swore the ash-bird nested up here, where the snow never quite leaves the north face. You have always dismissed what she said. Then the cloud splits and you see it, a black crest lifting out of the gully, and a tail of blue fire pouring down the rock like spilt ink that refuses to cool.

You climb towards it with loose stones sliding under your boots. Its wings open, one violet, one rose, the colour of sunset held in a fist, and small stars begin to prick out in the dark sky above its head. The ewe stands beneath it, quite unafraid, chewing. The bird lowers its head towards you, and you see that its eyes are the only warm things on the mountain.

It does not burn you. It opens its beak and a single ember drops onto the flat stone at your feet, glowing. Carry it down before the frost, says a dry voice in your head, like paper turning. Your hands shake as you cup it, and the heat is almost tender. You wrap it in your scarf and start down, and behind you the stars go out one by one, as if someone is counting them under their breath.