Fine line tattoo of a bird whose tail forms an infinity symbol, with soft pink and mint shading, on the side of the ribs.

Bird and infinity symbol on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A bird in flight is drawn in thin black linework, and its tail sweeps into an infinity symbol. Pale pink and mint green are washed softly beneath the wings and body, with minimal shading. The tattoo sits on the side of the ribs, and a patterned bikini top covers the upper part of the frame.

Fine line Ribs Bird Infinity symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ysolde,

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The mail-swallow came in at dusk again, the one with the rust ring on her left leg, and she did not make for the cote. She circled the harbour wall three times, then drew her long tail out over the water and looped it back on itself, the way she always does, as if the sea needed signing for. Old Brannoc says she is only lost. I say she is keeping time, which is more than the Chancellor manages.

Your letter came with her, folded inside the leather tube and damp at one corner. You write that the palace at Corr has put a price on the bells of Saint Essa, and that the baker's boy has been sent to the cells for singing the king's name wrong. I read it twice by the lamp. Then I went down to the wall and watched her sweep her figure of eight over the tide, the pink underneath her wings fading to mint where the last light caught her.

Here is what I have decided. Tomorrow I will tie my reply to her leg and send her back to you, though it will take four days over the mountains, and she will stop at every chimney on the road to gossip. Let her. She will come home to me in the end, because she always does, by the same long loop. Write me something small, a fish you ate or a stitch you dropped. The big news can wait for the wind.

Yours, with salt in my hair, Maelis