Flash design of an ornate cross with feathered wings, drawn in light grey line work on a black background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged ornate cross design

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a symmetrical ornate cross with decorative scrollwork and fleur-de-lis terminals, flanked by two feathered wings. The design is rendered in fine light grey outlines and detailing against a solid black background. It is a single centred composition in black and grey with no body part or skin visible.

Cross Wing Fleur-de-lis

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chapel key hangs on a hook behind the lift at half past two, and nobody on nights has ever asked why the porters keep it there rather than in the office. Sister Tindall rang down from the fourth floor because the lamp over the altar kept switching itself back on, and she wanted someone to look before the morning chaplain came in grumbling about the electric bill. So you walk the corridor with your torch and your trolley keys jangling, past the squeak of the sluice door, and let yourself in.

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The cross on the far wall is bigger than you remember. Someone has hung it on black cloth, and in the torchlight its grey outlines seem to float, the scrolled arms and fleur-de-lis ends sharp as cut paper. The wings spread out on either side of it like something that has been pinned there for a long time and is still deciding whether to leave. The lamp is a dud. The fault is in the switch, not the wiring, and you spend ten minutes with a screwdriver before the thing stays dark.

When you come back out, Sister is waiting in the corridor with two mugs of tea and a face that says she has been up since six yesterday. She asks if you saw anything. You tell her the cross needed a bit of dust off its wings. She laughs, the short laugh of someone who has heard worse from the chapel, and takes the mug you offer her.

On the way to the lift you look back once. The chapel door is still open, and the dark inside it has a shape to it now, the cross throwing its long wing-shadow across the floor like a door somebody forgot to close.