Black and grey botanical forearm tattoo of a speckled songbird on a branch, with leaves, a snowflake and a flower inside a tall outline shape.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird, leaves and snowflake forearm tattoo

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A speckled songbird perches on a branch at the centre of the design, surrounded by broad leaves, a snowflake and a round flower head at the base. The elements sit inside a tall outline shape, with fine linework and soft grey shading creating depth in the leaves and feathers. The design is entirely black and grey and fills the length of the forearm, photographed straight on against a plain wall.

Botanical Forearm Bird Songbird Branch Leaves Snowflake Flower Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Thomasin, the snow came up the valley on Tuesday night, and by Lauds the whole cloister garth was white to the foot of the wall. Brother Piers has swept a drift of old sycamore leaves against the infirmary door and will not let anyone burn them, saying they are too handsome to waste. I told him the abbot would have something to say about that, and he told me the abbot had said nothing about leaves, only about talking in the hours, which is a different matter entirely.

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The song thrush comes every morning now. She sits on the bramble by the infirmary step, speckled breast puffed against the cold, and sings the same four notes over and over while the bells are still being rung in the dark. Brother Piers says she is singing to the frost to hurry it along. I think she is only being stubborn, which is a virtue we have in short supply in this house. We left the cardoon standing at the edge of the beds, its round purple head gone to grey fluff, and she perches on that too, as if it were put there for her.

Yesterday I found a snowflake pressed into the frosted pane of the scriptorium, a perfect six-sided thing that must have formed on the outside and crept in through the crack. I sat with my ink going dry, watching it melt in the warmth of my breath, and I thought how little of this world I have ever bothered to look at closely.

The abbot will say the bird is a distraction. Perhaps she is. I have left the cardoon standing and the leaves in their heap, and each morning I go out before the bell to see whether she has come. Her small prints are there in the snow beside the step, three toes forward, neat as a copyist's hand. Tell Mother I have not gone soft. I have only been counting footprints.