Back of a person showing a large watercolour-style phoenix tattoo in red, orange and yellow with black splatter marks, spreading across the upper back and shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour phoenix across upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A large bird, likely a phoenix, is shown in mid-flight with outstretched wings across the upper back and shoulder blade. The wings and body are built from loose, sketchy strokes and splashes in red, orange and yellow, with black ink accents and speckles scattered outwards. The composition is asymmetrical, with the bird's head and body near the centre and the feathered wing edges fading into the surrounding skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pull your stools closer, the lot of you, and mind the draught from the door, for the snow has come over the top of the pass again and nobody is leaving before Candlemas. Now. The innkeeper at Hollin Gap had a daughter called Maud, and Maud had the habit of talking to the ash in the grate as if it were a neighbour who owed her money.

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One February the snow packed the chimney cowl solid, and the smoke had nowhere to go but back into the taproom. Everyone coughed and cursed, and a carter from Settle swore on his mother that he saw a bird in the murk, a great thing with wings spread the width of the hearth. Maud laughed at him and went to fetch the poker. Then the fire roared up of its own accord, red and gold, and the shutter of the flue burst open like a door in a gale.

The bird came down into the room in a shower of sparks, shedding feathers that hissed on the flagstones. It did not scorch the rafters. It circled the taproom three times, scattering cinders like seed, and every spark it touched went out grey and cold. Then it settled on the mantel and looked at the carter with one black eye, and the carter, to his credit, took off his hat.

The bird asked for only one thing, which was to be carried to the top of the pass, where the snow lay deepest and nothing else burned. Maud wrapped it in her apron and climbed up on the Thursday, and when she came back down the feathers in the folds had turned to snowflakes. The drifts were gone by Lady Day. That, friends, is why Hollin Gap has never once needed a bell for the fire. Now who wants the next one, for my throat is dry and I am not telling it on water.

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