Black linework wings and a central mandala tattoo on a woman's chest beneath a black lace bralette, with a grey floral tattoo on her upper arm.

Winged mandala across the chest

Geometric · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical design of feathered wings spreads across the chest and upper abdomen, with a geometric mandala at the centre below a black lace bralette. The lines are solid black and fine, with the feathers filled in detail, and the skin around the tattoo is pale. A grey, shaded floral tattoo is visible on the upper arm, and the photo is cropped so the face is not shown.

Geometric Chest Upper arm Wing Feather Mandala Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chart on the drawing table had been folded so many times that its creases had gone soft as cloth. Teodor pinned it flat with a brass compass and a cold mug, then bent over it again. Two wings, he had told the client, and a seal at the centre to hold them shut. She had laughed at that and said her grandmother always wanted a seal on everything.

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He had drawn the feathers one at a time, each a small leaf with a vein down the middle, working outward from the seal until the page ran out of room and he had to tape a second sheet to the first. The mandala was the hard part. Every ring had to close exactly, or the whole thing would sit crooked on the ribs like a picture hung by a drunk. He measured twice, then a third time, and still the last petal on the left came up short by the width of a hair.

The market in the square below was packing up in the rain. Stallholders dragged tarpaulins over crates of pears and hung lanterns from the awning poles, and the gutters ran with orange light. Teodor drew the last petal longer, let the line run a fraction past where it should have stopped, and sat back.

In the morning she came in under the umbrella with her hair wet and asked to see it. He turned the sheets around. She traced the nearest feather with one finger, then the seal, and said nothing for a long time. Then she asked him whether wings were meant to be open or closed, and he told her that depended entirely on where you were going.