Large realism tattoo on a person's back showing a woman's face framed by a feathered wing, red cherry blossom, lotus flowers and Japanese-style waves.

Realist woman portrait with lotus on a back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows a shaded portrait of a woman with long dark hair, framed by a feathered wing that rises over her head. Red cherry blossom branches, grey lotus flowers and stylised wave lines fill the sides and lower half of the design. The portrait and wing are rendered in soft black and grey shading, while the blossoms add red accents against the skin.

Realism Japanese Botanical Back Woman Portrait Wing Feather Cherry blossom Lotus Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At the ford where the two valleys met, the toll-keeper's wife grew a plum tree against the wall of the house, and every spring it flowered before anything else in the district. Travellers paid in salt, coin or news. Nobody paid in feathers, so when a grey-winged woman waded out of the river one wet morning and asked for passage, the keeper's wife gave her a bowl of rice and asked no questions.

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The woman said her name was Ren and that she had come down from the lake, where the lotus grew so thick a person could walk on it if they were light enough. Her wing was folded against her back, long as an oar, and wrapped in oilcloth. The border corporal, a careful young man named Tomas Vell, had been sent to count everyone who crossed, and he did not like counting what he could not see. He told her she must unwrap the wing so he could be sure it was not hiding salt or silver.

She unwrapped it. The plum blossom came loose from the tree in one breath and filled the toll-house doorway. Where the wing opened, the road turned to river and the river ran uphill, carrying reeds and white flowers past the gate. The corporal stood very still with his pen in his hand. Ren only smiled at him, the way a person smiles at someone who has finally looked properly.

When the water settled back into its bed, the wing was folded again and the woman was on the far bank, walking away through the wet grass. The corporal opened his ledger and wrote one crossing, no goods. Then he sat a long while, until the petals on the page had dried and curled at the edges like small red hands.