Five small black bird silhouettes on one ankle and a black palm tree on the other ankle, shown on bare feet on a sandy beach.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Birds and palm tree on both ankles

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two bare feet rest on sand by the water, with five small solid black birds across the top of one foot and a slender black palm tree with a fronded crown on the ankle of the other. The tattoos are simple, bold black shapes with no shading, and the ink is the only colour against the warm skin and pale sand. A striped red, yellow and green anklet sits above the birds, and the background shows the shoreline and distant trees.

Ankle Bird Palm tree Beach Sand Anklet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pell had counted the terns off the end of the groyne every morning for forty years, and every morning there were five, never four and never six. She wrote the number in the back of the tide book beside the date. The island's only palm had come ashore in a crate of bananas from a ship that never docked, rooted itself in the shingle below the chapel wall, and nobody believed it would last a winter. It lasted twelve.

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The summer Teodor came over from the mainland to mend the sluice gate, he laughed at the tree, at the tide book and at her counting. He said birds did not keep appointments. Pell said that was exactly why she counted them, so someone would notice when one failed to come. He bet her a bottle of kirsch he could scatter the five with a single stone. She told him to try. He did, and the terns lifted and wheeled over the water, then came back down onto the same five posts in the same order, as if they had been asked a question and had answered it.

Teodor stayed longer than the sluice needed. By September he knew the names of the tides, and by October he knew the count. When the gate was finished he left on the last boat, and Pell stood on the groyne with the book open and drew a sixth mark beside the date, small and black, like a bird settling.

The next morning there were five again. She left the sixth mark where it was.