Three ornamental feather designs drawn in black ink with pink, purple, blue and orange accents on a white background, suited to a tattoo flash sheet.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three ornamental feathers in ink and colour

Geometric · Mixed · Flash

Three feathers sit side by side on a plain white background, each filled with dense black linework of swirls, zigzags, triangles and dotted bands. Pink, purple, blue and orange areas run through the feathers, and fine spatter dots surround the outer two. The composition is evenly spaced and centred, with the middle feather shown as a teardrop shape with a curled tip.

Geometric Feather Ornamental pattern Tribal pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman would not take Aldo Penhallow across the Saltward until he had paid in feathers. Aldo had only three, pulled from the grey heron that nested above his mother's well, and he laid them on the wet planks one at a time. The first was long and striped with violet. The second was round at the base, pointed like a drop of rain, with its tip curled over like a question. The third was hung with silver specks, as if it had been out in a storm.

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The ferryman turned each one over with a knuckle. "Every feather is a road," he said. "Pay with one and you cross. The other two stay on this side with whoever is waiting for you." Aldo thought of his brothers, Hal and Tobin, who had gone over the water a year before and never sent word. Hal had always favoured the violet one. Tobin, who could not sit still, would have wanted the silver.

Aldo pushed the curled feather across the planks. The ferryman raised his eyebrows, then laughed, a short sound like a gull. "That one only ever brings a man back," he said. "Everyone else pays for the far shore and stays there." He pulled the oar free of the mud and the boat drifted out into the grey.

Behind them the other two feathers lay on the landing, catching the last light. Aldo did not look at them again. He watched the far shore come up out of the mist, and he began, quietly, to count the days until someone rowed back to fetch the others.