Black tribal-style phoenix design with purple shading, rising with outstretched wings above a long curling tail and a feather, on a white background.

Tribal phoenix with feather design

Mixed · Flash

A bold phoenix in a tribal-style design, with its wings spread upward and a long tail curling down the left side to a single feather at the lower right. The linework is solid black with feathered detail, and purple shading follows the edges of the wings, tail and feather. The bird is centred on a plain white background, with the feather balancing the composition.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pass me the salt, Tomas, and mind the pan, because this is the bit where the fire comes in. Hetty Lusk cooked on the Morag Dean for thirty-one years, and above her stove she hung a copper bird no longer than my forearm. Its wings were spread as if it meant to lift the whole ship off the water. Every voyage she swore it had been cast from the lamp that lit the first crossing, and every voyage the deckhands rolled their eyes and ate their biscuit anyway.

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Then came the February gale off the Minch, the one that took the foremast and half the ship's sheep. A lamp tipped in the galley. Oil ran along the scrubbed boards like a dare, and the flames climbed the curtain and found the rope locker. Hetty didn't scream. She took the sand bucket in both hands, walked straight into the smoke, and buried the fire shovel by shovel while the boy Ewan hauled the hose and the sea slapped the portholes. When the sky finally greyed, the galley was black to the rafters and the copper bird was still swinging on its hook, its wings scorched to a dull rose.

Hetty swore the bird had flared at the start of it, bright as a struck match, and that she had only moved to keep it from falling. Ewan never argued. He was the one who saw her hands shake when she unhooked it, and the one who found a single curl of copper in the flour sack beneath, still warm, as if something had flown through and forgotten to leave by the door.

So if you're wondering why I keep this stove lit so late, it's because the bird likes its kitchen. Now hand me that feather, Tomas, and let's see whether the stew agrees with it.