Back view of a woman in a black dress with black and grey wing tattoos on her shoulder blades, an ouroboros on the mid-back and bands on her upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wings and ouroboros on a back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is seen from behind in a grassy field, wearing a flower crown and holding a bunch of white flowers. Two winged designs in grey shading sit over the shoulder blades, and a black ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail, is placed centrally on the mid-back. Solid dark bands wrap the upper arm and forearm, and the ink is entirely black and grey.

Blackwork Back Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Wing Serpent Snake Band

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Aunt Pru had the rings pinned inside her cardigan before the vicar even arrived, and by the time we reached the top field she was patting her chest every few steps like a woman checking for a purse. I was best woman, which mostly meant holding the umbrella and the gin, and I had spent three evenings on my knees painting the seating plan onto slate in a hand my tutor would have called hopeful. The marquee had been pegged out on Hollin Edge, where the grass runs down to a dry-stone wall and the sheep look on with open suspicion.

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Ossie, the groom's grandfather, had asked for one thing only. He wanted a serpent chalked around the cake table, swallowing its own tail, because his late wife had drawn one on the back of every birthday card he ever received. Nobody had the heart to say no. His grandson's sister, who had once played an angel in a school nativity, produced a pair of plywood wings from the loft, painted them grey, and strapped them to the tent pole so they would catch the light. It looked less like a wedding and more like a village fete that had been left in charge of a myth.

The rain came in sideways off the moor just as the groom said his vows, and everyone ran for the flap except Ossie. He took the rings from Aunt Pru, walked the chalk circle in the wet grass with his head bent, and counted the lines under his breath the way his wife must have taught him. Halfway round the chalk began to run. At the end he simply stepped back onto the first line, and the serpent's head met its own tail under the canvas, and nobody could say any longer where the drawing had started.