Black linework abstract mark and the words The world is quiet here in small script on an ankle, shown in a three-panel photo collage.

Abstract mark and quote on an ankle

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A three-panel collage showing a tattoo on the ankle and foot. The top left panel is a close view of a black abstract mark made of a sweeping loop and two tapering strokes. The top right and lower panels show the words The world is quiet here in thin, small lettering on the side of the ankle, with the abstract mark placed above it. The ink is solid black with no shading or colour, and the skin is shown against a plain background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At the Thursday market in Carrow Lane the rain came sideways off the river, and the woman who sold birds under the tarpaulin had stopped calling her wares an hour before. Her cages sat under sacking. Nobody bought birds in weather like that, and she had never expected to.

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A boy called Tobin came running with a bent umbrella and asked her why she had gone quiet. She said the birds had taken the noise out of the town years ago and kept it in their cages, and that on Thursdays she let a little of it out. Then she lifted the sacking from the smallest cage. Inside sat a grey swift with its wings folded, looking at him with no sound at all.

"Take it up to the top of the wall," she said, "open the door, and say what you want to hear back." He did as he was told. The swift went up in one loop and two long strokes across the grey sky, and for a moment the rain thinned to nothing. When Tobin looked down, the market had gone soft and far away, the stallholders' shouting dropping like stones into a well.

He stood on the wall until the bird was a speck, then climbed back down with wet hair and empty hands. The woman held out her palm for his coin. "What did you ask it?" she said. "Nothing," said Tobin. "I only wanted to see if it would come back." She closed his fingers over the coin and tapped the empty cage. "The world is quiet here, love. That is the price. Come back on Thursday."

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