Black ink tattoo on the upper back below the neck showing a bird silhouette with arrows, a flock of small birds, the Deathly Hallows triangle symbol, a trident and the words books are proof humans can

Birds, Deathly Hallows symbol and quote on upper back

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The tattoo shows a bird silhouette with arrow shapes above a line of smaller flying birds, sitting beside a triangle, circle and vertical line symbol on the left and a trident on the right. The words books are proof humans can do magic run across the centre in a serif script with solid, even linework. The ink is black on pale skin, with the photograph framed close on the upper back and neck.

Back Bird Arrow Triangle Circle Trident Quote Lettering Silhouette

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boarding house at Gullwick stood with its back against the harbour wall, and in the attic under the slates lived a lodger called Tobin Rake. He paid his rent in coins that smelled of the sea and his debts in books, which he carried up the stairs in a crate every Friday. Nobody in the town asked what he did with them.

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The landlady's daughter, Ada, was nine and had never owned a book. She watched that crate through the banister rails for a whole month before she asked him for one. Tobin said she could have a book if she told him what it was for. She said it was for reading. He laughed until he coughed, then said it was the only sensible answer he had heard in twenty years.

He gave her a small green volume with a torn spine and a pressed fern marking the middle. That night the wind came off the water and set the swifts screaming over the roofs, and the birds came down in a straight line, low and quick as thrown arrows, to settle on the attic sill. Tobin was not surprised. He had been expecting them since the first gale.

In the morning Ada found a brass trident nailed above the attic door and a crooked triangle with a circle inside it chalked on the top step. She asked what they meant. Tobin only shrugged and went back to his crate. Ada read until the lamps were lit, and the birds stayed on the sill all night, keeping watch over the page.