Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Teal and purple feather on the side

Realism · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A single feather runs diagonally across the side of the torso, with a pale central quill and soft barbs. The barbs are shaded in teal, blue, violet and green, with smooth gradients that give the feather depth. The tattoo sits against a plain skin background, with a grey knit top and a blue waistband at the edge of the frame.

Realism Ribs Feather Quill Plume

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had found the gap in the tarpaulin again, and Nell Okafor-Price shifted the tray of loose plumes an inch further under the awning before it could soak the jays. Along Hallam Row the stalls were shutting early. Only the fishmonger still shouted, and the gutters ran the colour of weak tea down to the drain by the bus shelter.

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The boy came at half four, hood up, trainers squelching. He wanted a feather for his gran, who had sold her sewing machine to pay for a funeral and now kept nothing but a jar of buttons. Nell did not ask why a boy of twelve wanted a feather in November. She pulled one from the tin, a blue-green jay primary with a violet sheen at the tip, and held it up under the streetlight so the barbs fanned out like wet silk.

"Quill's clean," she said. "Keep it off the wet or it'll clump." He turned it over, frowning at the pale spine. He had a ten-pound note folded into a tight square, and she waved it away and took a single pound coin, the way her own mother had done for children who could not count yet.

When he had gone she found the tin's lid had come loose and rain was dripping into the buttons. She stood a while in the drizzle, watching the place where he had turned left towards the estate, and thought that the feather would keep its colour longer than most grans. Then she tipped the tray, let the rest of the plumes go into the bag for the bin, and kept back the last one, a teal feather with a bent barb, tucking it under the tarpaulin's edge where the rain could not reach.