Two calf tattoos in black ink with blue accents, a hanging birdcage on the left and two swallows perched on a branch on the right.

Birdcage and swallows on calves

Neo-trad · Calf · Mixed · Photo

Two matching tattoos sit side by side on a pair of lower legs. The left shows an ornate birdcage with an open door, dotted swirls and a row of hanging beads, drawn in fine black outline. The right shows two swallows perched close together on a bare branch, with stippled shading and blue tones on their bellies and wings.

Neo-trad Dotwork Calf Birdcage Swallow Bird Branch Bead Pair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Rain had been coming off the canopies of Hallow Street market since seven, and by eleven Edie Marsh had stopped trying to keep the cages dry. She hung them from the hooks along the back of the stall anyway, twelve brass domes with their doors propped open, beads swinging on the little chains beneath each base and tapping together whenever a gust came under the tarpaulin.

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The swallows arrived before the lunchtime crowd, as they always did when the weather turned. There were two of them, blue-backed and rust-throated, and they settled on the bare ash branch that leaned over the fishmonger's awning, close enough that their shoulders touched. Edie watched them preen. The man beside her, who sold secondhand paperbacks in soggy bags, said they had nested under the arcade eaves since spring and would not be moved on by anyone.

She had made the largest cage for her brother, Tom, who had gone south for work and never sent a forwarding address. She had meant to give it to him at Christmas. Instead it sat on her counter with its door standing open and one bead missing from the hem, and she had not decided whether that meant anything.

At half past one the rain thinned to drizzle and the swallows lifted together, banking low over the stalls. One of them dropped to the open door of the largest cage, looked inside, then turned and flew back to its partner on the branch. Edie laughed out loud, alone at her counter, and tied a red thread round the cage's hook.