Black line tattoos on a forearm show a stippled bird head, a wireframe icosahedron and a bird claw, in a fine line and geometric style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird head, icosahedron and claw on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three separate black tattoos run down the outer forearm: a bird's head in profile at the top, a large open-outline icosahedron in the centre, and a scaled bird foot with talons at the bottom. The bird head is built from fine stippled and hatched shading, while the icosahedron and claw use clean, even outlines. The image is shown in black and grey ink against plain skin, with the three motifs stacked evenly along the arm.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Bird Geometric shape Claw Talon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The finch came in through the broken pane above the back room of the Lamp and Tiller at twenty past two, when the city outside had stopped pretending to be asleep. Nobody at the table looked up. Mrs Okonedo was stacking her chips, Tobin had his cigarette going, and I had the twenty-sided die rolling between my palms, the way Father taught me, to keep the warmth out of it. The bird landed on the felt beside the stake pile and cocked its head at me with one black eye, as if it had been sent to check my arithmetic.

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The game was a grudge match against a man called Halloran, who had bought up the Tiller's debts and wanted the deed to the shop. I wanted my brother's name back on the lease. Tobin said the finch was a bad omen. Mrs Okonedo said it was a sparrow with ambitions. I said nothing, because I had been counting the rolls. Nineteen the last time, nineteen the time before that. The die is a faceted thing, its triangles meeting at points like a crown somebody sat on, and a fair one never favours anybody for long.

Halloran rolled first and got a six. I rolled and the die came up a one, skittering off the felt and under the radiator. The finch dropped after it, quick as a thought, and for a moment I thought it had cheated. Then it hopped back out with the die in its beak, set it on the felt, and pushed it toward me with one scaled foot, talons curled, the way you'd return a dropped glove.

I rolled again and the die settled on twenty. Halloran slid the deed across without a word. The bird went back out through the broken pane, and I walked down Sheaf Street with the lights still burning in the shopfronts and the lease folded inside my coat, counting the windows as I passed them.