Traditional style tattoo of a woman in a feathered headdress, with a skull in a teal circle, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman with feather headdress and skull on arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman's face is framed by dark hair and an ornate feathered headdress with a jewelled band, and a skull sits inside a teal circle at the lower left. The linework is bold and dark, with solid black areas and grey shading on the face, and teal wash accents around the skull and neck. The design fills the arm in a diagonal composition, with the headdress at the top and the skull below.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Saltmarsh Palais had a brass band that played until the lamps guttered, and a girl called Irene Vane who danced in a headdress of peacock feathers her mother had sewn from a dead aunt's hat. Nobody in the village had ever seen her ask a man to dance. They came to her.

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One wet night a stranger in a grey coat sat at the corner table and set a glass ball on the cloth. Inside it, when the lamplight caught, a skull turned slowly, as if it were looking for someone. 'Dance with me once,' he said, 'and I will show you what the ball has seen of your future.' Irene laughed, the band struck up, and she danced with him until the floor was empty.

When the band packed up at three, the ball was still on the table and the stranger was gone. All that remained was one wet peacock feather lying where his coat had been. Irene picked up the glass and saw that the skull had turned to face her. Beside it, small as a pin's head, was her own face, older than it should have been, with her hair pinned under a jewelled band.

She told no one. The next Saturday she danced again, and every week after, the feathers on her head grew a little more ragged and the skull in the glass grew a little more patient. Some nights she still sits at the corner table waiting for the band to start, and she is never surprised to find the glass already waiting for her.

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