Realistic black and grey feather tattoo running down the inner forearm of a person whose arm is raised and bent at the elbow.

Shaded feather on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large feather is tattooed along the forearm, with its quill running from near the wrist down towards the elbow. The barbs are rendered in soft grey shading with lighter highlights, giving a three-dimensional, realistic look. The arm is photographed close up against a plain top and a pale background, with the feather filling most of the frame.

Realism Forearm Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The feather came down past the ninth floor of Harrow Court on a Tuesday, turning slowly as if it had all the time in the world. Dorota Vance saw it from her kitchen window and set down the kettle. Nobody on that estate kept birds, not even the pigeons, which had long since given up on the balconies. She went down in her slippers, past the bins and the cracked bench, and found it lying on the wet tarmac, grey and as long as her forearm, its quill still clean.

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Her mother had told her about the feathers when she was small. Every one that falls on the estate belongs to a tenant who has gone quiet. Keep it, her mother said, and carry it up to the one who needs it, and the stairwell lights will hold. Dorota had never believed a word of it, but she picked the feather up anyway. It weighed nothing at all, and when she turned it to the light the barbs showed a silver sheen, the colour of rain on slate.

She climbed to the fourteenth floor, where Mr Abiodun Hale had not opened his door since the spring. The landing light flickered as she passed. She knocked, then slid the feather under the door and waited. For a long while there was only the hum of the lift. Then a chain rattled, and a long hand came out, fingers reaching for the quill as though it were something warm.

Dorota went back down, and when she reached the car park she looked up. A grey shape stood on the fourteenth balcony rail, straightening its wings. Then it dropped out over the estate and rode the wind towards the river. The stairwell lights stayed on that night, and for the first time in a year the bench by the bins had someone sitting on it.