Black and grey realism tattoo of a shaded cross with feathered angel wings on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged cross on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded cross with a dimensional, metallic look sits at the centre, with feathered angel wings spreading out on either side. The linework is bold and the grey shading gives the cross depth and highlights along its length. The tattoo fills most of the frame against a close-up view of warm skin.

Realism Back Cross Wing Angel wing Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had sealed the Hesketh road by Tuesday, and by Thursday Mrs Dunning had stopped counting the guests who were not going anywhere. Nell Farrow stood in the taproom doorway with a tray of cooling mutton and watched the stranger in the settle by the fire turn his parcel over and over in his lap.

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When he unwrapped it, it was a cross the length of a forearm, cast in dark metal that caught the lamplight like wet slate. Two wings had been worked on either side, each feather cut so fine that she could see the candle through the edges when he tilted it. He said he was a founder from Sheffield taking it to the chapel at Wrenfell, where the old one had split in the frost. He had talked about it for two days without once saying who had paid for the wings.

Nell asked him in the end. He laughed and said his brother had done the feathers, a man who had never set foot in a church but had sketched birds on every wall of the works. He had died in the spring, and the founder had promised to finish the cross before the thaw. Nell found she was setting the tray down harder than she meant to.

In the morning the drifts reached the sills, and the cross was gone from the settle. In its place lay a folded note pressed under the salt cellar: Hold it to the window at dusk. The wings throw the shadow. At dusk the sun slid low across the white fields, and on the wall above the stairs a cross of shadow spread wide, feathers and all, and stayed there until the light went out.