Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of a hunched winged figure with crosses behind it, on the outer upper arm.

Winged figure on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A hunched, winged humanoid figure stands at the centre of the design, drawn with loose, sketchy black outlines and light cross-hatching across the torso. Long feather-like wing strokes rise on either side, and small crosses sit near the figure's feet along a faint ground line. The work is in black ink with grey tones on the skin, and the composition is centred on the upper arm.

Upper arm Angel Wing Figure Crosses

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas had counted the crosses in the churchyard above Scarrow Point every night for eleven years, and tonight there was one more than there should be. He stood at the lamp room window with the brass cold under his palm and watched the thing come up the path from the cliff edge, its wings folded so tight against its back they looked like wet sails.

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It walked the way old men walk after a funeral, head bowed, each step placed as if the ground might give. His grandmother had told him these were not angels, whatever the parish called them. They came up from the sea when the boats were lost and went among the stones looking for names. Tomas had never believed her. He believed her now, because the thing stopped at the fourth grave from the wall and pressed one long hand flat against the granite, the way you might test a door for heat.

He went down the spiral stairs with the hurricane lamp and the logbook, because somebody had to write it down. Wind pulled at the iron door. Outside, the grass was grey with salt, and the feathers along the thing's wings rattled like reeds. When it lifted its head, its face was only a smooth dome of bone where the eyes should be, and he felt rather than saw it turn towards the light.

"Not tonight," he said, which was what his father had always said, and the thing bowed again and went back down the slope towards the water. By morning the fourth stone had a new name cut into it, in letters as neat as any mason's, and Tomas had no memory of cutting them. He wrote that in the logbook too.