Teal awareness ribbon tattoo with shaded grey angel wings spread either side, on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Teal awareness ribbon with angel wings

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A teal awareness ribbon sits centrally, with its two loops and tails curling across the design. Angel wings with feather detail spread out on either side, shaded in black and grey. The colour is limited to the teal ribbon, while the wings are rendered in tonal greys against smooth skin.

Back Awareness ribbon Angel wing Ribbon Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hayloft smells of cold dust and sour straw, and you have climbed the ladder twice already before the yard lamp flickers on. Your father said the barn owl would be dead by morning, the way they always are when they drop out of the eaves in a hard frost. You find her wedged behind a bale of last year's hay, one wing folded wrong, her pale face turned to you like a question nobody has asked her yet.

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You kneel in the dust and wait for her to decide about you. Her feathers are a grey so fine they look like breath on glass, and the wing that still works spreads wider than your arms when she tries to lift it. Nothing in the shed is the right size for a splint. You think of the teal ribbon your mother keeps in the tin with the buttons, the one that tied her Sunday hat, and you tear a strip from it with your teeth because your fingers are too cold to manage a knot.

Back in the kitchen, the range ticks and your mother watches you bind the wing against the small body with the silk pulled tight. Neither of you speaks. The owl hisses once, then goes still in a shoebox lined with a tea towel, and you sit up with her until the window turns from black to the colour of skimmed milk.

In the morning the box is empty except for a single grey feather and a knot of teal silk, and the hayloft door hangs open on the frost. Your father finds you on the step with the feather in your palm. He says nothing, only tips his cap at the sky, where a pale shape is turning slow above the top field, both wings stretched wide enough to catch the first light.