Hand-drawn black tribal phoenix design with spread wings and a long flowing tail, drawn in ink on lined notebook paper, with no body placement shown.

Tribal phoenix design on lined paper

Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a tribal-style phoenix with a bold heart-shaped body, a curled head with a plume, and wings made of sharp, swirled flame-like feathers. Three long tail feathers taper downwards in flowing, tapering curves. The solid black shapes are drawn on white lined paper, centred on the page with even spacing.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Flame Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Leave that lantern alone, Tom, and sit where I can see your face, for this is the part the mate never tells you when he's sober. Thirty-one days out of Valparaíso with the Halcyon Ruth riding low and coal dust in every biscuit, and the fire started in the lamp room just after the second bell of the middle watch. Nobody saw who knocked the paraffin. Nobody ever does.

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The men went down with buckets and came up coughing, and the smoke rolled out of the hatch like something alive looking for a way off the ship. Then the bird came up through it. Ash grey at first, then black, the way ink takes on a page. Its wings were cut from the old spiral work they stitch onto a sailor's forearm, sharp at every tip, swirling back on themselves like the grain in a cooper's oak. Its head bent round to face its own breast, and a single plume stood up from the crown like a question nobody on board wanted to answer.

Old Cressida at the galley door swore it had a heart for a body, two curves meeting at a point, and that the heart was beating. The bosun said that was the smoke talking. Still, I watched it circle the masthead three times, and on the third turn three long tail feathers streamed down behind it, tapering as they went, and wherever they brushed the mainmast the wood went black and curled.

It landed on the bowsprit, folded itself up small, and waited. The captain came out in his nightshirt, knelt, and asked it what it wanted. It said nothing, but the fire went out at once, every last ember, as if a tap had been shut. We made Falmouth eleven days later. You can still see the three scorch marks on the mainmast, if you know which side to look. Put your hand there, boy. It's warm even now.