Black tattoo of a bare tree with birds in flight, in a solid black silhouette style, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bare tree and flying birds on the side

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a leafless tree with a thick, twisting trunk and many fine branches, with three birds in flight above it and two perched in the branches. It is rendered as solid black silhouette with bold shapes and some fine branch detail, and no other colour is present. The tree fills the lower left of the frame and the birds sit to the upper right, on smooth skin along the side of the torso.

Botanical Ribs Tree Bird Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the rooks have gone off the top field again, all of them at once, the way they did the week you left. I counted from the kitchen step. Eleven went up out of the crooked elm by the lane and wheeled over the sheep pens three times before they settled on the far side of the beck. Father would have said that meant rain. It has not rained since March.

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The elm is nearly dead now. Mr Harker from Low Garth says the sap stopped in the spring and the bark is coming away in sheets like wet paper. Still it throws its black branches against the sky every morning, thin as pen strokes, and the birds use them like a ledger. Three in the air, two perched on the high twigs, the same arrangement for a month now. I have started to think they are waiting for someone to come up the lane.

Yesterday a carter stopped at the gate asking after a boy in a red scarf. I told him there were no boys here, only me, the dog and the rooks. He laughed and said the crows down in the valley were thick as flies and nobody could tell one from another. But I know mine. The one with the ragged left wing has sat on the same stub since you went, and it does not fly off for the dog.

Come home when the lambs are in, or send word if you cannot. I will take the gate off its hinge so nothing is shut out. If the birds lift when they see a figure on the road, I will know it is you, and the kettle will be on before you reach the step. Your sister, Nell.