Black and grey realism tattoo of a bird skull inside a pale diamond lattice on a forearm, with the Roman numeral VII above and Fig. 1 below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird skull in a diamond outline on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed bird skull, viewed from the front, sits at the centre of a pale diamond outline that appears to be a lighter, raised or white-ink lattice. The text VII sits above the skull and Fig. 1 sits below it, both in a plain serif typeface. The skull is shaded in soft greys and black with fine detail in the eye sockets and beak, and the photo is taken straight on against a patterned background.

Realism Geometric Forearm Skull Diamond Roman numeral Lattice

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Thirty-four dead warblers on the gallery this morning, and the wind still in the north-east. Ferrier wants them swept into the sea before the inspector comes up from Penzance on Thursday, but I have kept the best of them in a biscuit tin on the shelf above the paraffin, wrapped in yesterday's tide tables.

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I boiled the rook's head in the scullery pan my mother used for mussels, then left it on the window ledge for three days until the ants had done the rest. What remains is cleaner than anything I have managed on the gallery. The beak runs long and narrow as a bodkin, and the eye holes are deep enough to hold a thumbnail. I cannot think why a bird that flies at the light should have such careful bones inside it.

Ferrier keeps a worn copy of a natural history of British birds with engraved plates, each numbered in Roman figures and captioned Fig. 1, Fig. 2, as though the birds were laid out for a court. I have copied the skull onto squared paper and drawn a diamond of lines around it, the way the lantern glass breaks the sky into panes. Plate VII, I have written on the back, though there is no plate VII, only the one I am making.

When the lamp is lit at dusk the glass throws its diamonds across the whitewash, and the skull sits in the middle of them like something posted for identification. Ferrier knocked tonight to ask whether I had swept the gallery. I said I had. Both of us know the rook struck the glass on Sunday, and both of us know it was flying straight for the light.