Black and grey realism style tattoo of a feather on the inner upper arm, with a small outlined triangle beside it.

Shaded feather and triangle on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black feather runs diagonally along the inner upper arm, with fine hatched linework and grey shading that gives the quill depth and texture. A simple outlined triangle sits to the left of the feather on the same arm. The plain grey textured wall behind the arm keeps the focus on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the range and mind the kettle, because this is the long way round and I'll not tell it short. Up at Carn Ddu they kept a canary in a wicker cage on a hook at the bottom of the Number Three drift. Every man who went down the shaft knew what it meant when that bird went quiet.

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Dai Pritchard's lad Emrys was fourteen and fond of the thing, which was foolish, because a canary is a tool and a tool does not need a name. He called her Mrs Sisters anyway. Each morning he pushed a smear of seed through the wire from his own pocket, and each morning the overman, a hard old stick called Gwyn Teg, told him to keep his fingers out of the cage.

One February the bird sat on its perch with its feathers puffed up and did not sing. Emrys ran up the slope with his cap in his fist, but nobody listens to a boy. The overman chalked a triangle on the gatepost, the old mark for stop, and sent the day shift home. Half the village cursed them for the lost wages. Emrys sat on his mother's back step and did not touch his tea.

The next morning he found one grey feather caught in the wire of the cage door. He pressed it flat inside his Bible and kept it there for sixty years. When his daughter finally opened the book, the feather was still between the pages of Ruth, and the chalk on the gatepost had long since been painted over.

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