Black and grey tattoo of a winged figure in flowing robes holding a laurel wreath, on the upper arm of a person in a black vest top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged figure tattoo on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A winged female figure in a long draped robe holds a laurel wreath aloft, shown in profile across the upper arm and shoulder. The work uses fine black linework and grey shading to render the feathers, folds of fabric and skin. The background shows black and white anatomical illustrations of a figure, a heart and a vase, which sit beside the tattooed arm.

Upper arm Winged figure Angel Laurel wreath Robe Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad kept the anatomy books in the chapel vestry because the Institute had no shelves that didn't leak. I was nine the winter Mr Pryce asked me to copy the plates for the new reading room, and I sat at the vestry table with a pen dipped in Indian ink while the afternoon shift went down with a clatter of cages.

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The plate I liked best showed a man with one shoulder opened like a cupboard door, every muscle a ribbon. Beside him sat a heart on a pin and a vase with a crack down its side. Mr Pryce said the Greeks gave their goddesses wings so they could carry news faster than men could run. I drew her in the margin of my practice sheet, the wreath held up in her right hand, the robe falling in folds I counted like stitches.

On the Tuesday the cage stuck at four hundred feet with six men inside, my brother Idris among them. I did not go down to the lamp room with the others. I sat in the vestry and drew her again, bigger this time, wings spread wide over the vase, the laurel lifted high because Mr Pryce had told me a finished drawing was a promise the hand could keep.

When the cage came up at dusk, Idris was the last one out, his face black to the ears. He took the sheet from my hands, looked at it for a long while and laughed. 'She's got no boots,' he said. 'She's got no need,' I told him, and I pinned her above the vase on the vestry wall, where she stayed until the damp got into the corner.