Colour tattoo of a red-haired fairy with blue wings and green leaves across a bare back, in a painterly neo-traditional style.

Red-haired fairy with blue wings across a back

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A red-haired fairy with translucent blue wings sits within swirling red hair-like forms and green foliage that spread across the back and down the side. The linework is bold, with soft painterly shading that blends red, orange, green and blue ink. The composition is a full-back piece set against a dark background, with the figure's arm decorated with fine ornamental patterns.

Neo-trad Back Fairy Wing Red hair Leaves Berry Ornament Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had not meant to stay past the first frost, but the ivy along the Cardigan Street wall had grown thick over the railings, and inside it a rowan tree was dropping its berries onto the cobbles one by one. The fairies of the old mill yard had told her that a rowan berry held in the palm was a promise, and that a promise left lying in the street would be picked up by the wrong hands. So she gathered them, every one, into the pocket of her red coat, and by midnight she had a fistful of cold, bright fruit and no way home.

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Her wings were the colour of pond water under a pale moon, and they ached whenever a tram rattled past the end of the lane. The lamplighter at the corner had seen her before. He was a gentle man with ink on his cuffs, and he did not ask what a fairy wanted in a city. He only said that the Ferrier's yard was open late, and that the old woman who ran it bought things nobody else would touch.

Nell found her in the back room, surrounded by coils of green thread and clocks that had stopped at different hours. The woman turned a berry over under a glass and named her price: one wing, folded and sealed, in exchange for the rest of the winter's warmth. Nell opened her mouth to laugh, then closed it, because the woman was not joking.

She walked out with both wings intact and the berries still in her coat. The rowan leaves were turning red along the wall, and behind her the lamplighter was snuffing the last lamp. Somewhere in the dark a tram bell rang once, like a promise being kept.