Large red and grey phoenix tattoo with cherry blossom branches and falling petals, in a Japanese-inspired style, across the back.

Red phoenix and cherry blossom across a back

Japanese · Back · Colour · Photo

A red phoenix with spread wings rises above a branch of cherry blossom, with a long flowing tail trailing down the back. Shading uses soft grey washes and dark linework, giving the piece a painted, misty effect, with scattered red petals and swirling grey wind shapes filling the space. The design covers most of the back in a vertical composition, with the head and hair cropped at the top edge of the frame.

Japanese Back Phoenix Bird Cherry blossom Branch Petal Swirl Wind Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on the market at Sallow Cross since the morning bell, and by noon the stalls sagged under it like wet sheets. Old Mabry Crane sold eels and string from the corner pitch. She kept a bird in a wicker cage under her sacking, a red bird with no name, and would not let anyone touch it.

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Her granddaughter Wen swept the puddles for a penny a day. Each evening she carried the cage home past the plum tree outside the chapel gate, and each evening the bird sang one low note, the way a kettle hums before it boils. People said the bird had come out of the tannery fire the winter the roof fell in. Wen did not believe the stories, but she believed the note.

One night in the wet spring the plum tree broke into flower overnight, and the petals lay on the cobbles like scattered coins. Mabry was too ill to stand. Wen lifted the latch. The bird did not fly at first. It sat on the rim of the cage and looked up through the rain, then stepped onto her wrist, light as a folded letter.

It rose over the chapel roof with its wings open and its tail unspooling behind it, red as a ribbon through the grey. The wind turned the stall awnings inside out and lifted the petals into a slow whirl. Wen stood in the wet with her broom and watched until the bird was a spark and then nothing. When she turned back, the cobbles were dry in a circle around her feet, and the empty cage was warm.