Black and grey tattoo of a raven in flight holding hanging chains with pendants, on the side of a ribcage.

Black and grey raven with chains on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey raven is shown mid-flight, with outstretched wings and a beak gripping several hanging chains that end in small pendants. The feathers are rendered with dense black shading and fine grey highlights, giving the bird strong contrast against the skin. The design runs diagonally down the side of the ribs, with partial lettering visible along the lower edge of the frame.

Realism Ribs Raven Bird Chain Pendant Feather Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gulls of Porthkerris had given up on the fishmonger's slabs years ago, but you never did. You learned the harbour the way a sailor learns a knot, by getting it wrong first, then lifting the bright things that tourists and widows left on the rail while nobody was watching. Nobody in town called you a thief. They called you the Bosun, because you walked the quay as though you held the tide tables.

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The summer the Mercer girl dropped her locket off the ferry, you found it wedged between two mooring stones and did not carry it to the lost property hatch in the Customs House. You took it up the hill instead, and then the chain from the chapel collection plate, and then a cufflink, a thimble and a tin medal, until the whole jangling run of them hung from your beak like the bell rope of a small ship. Mrs Trewin on the bench below saw the glint and laughed until she coughed.

Then the storm came in off the Lizard and the lifeboat went out with three men aboard. You watched the lamp at the point through the spray, and when the boat limped back under the wall at dawn, you swooped down to the slipway and let every pendant you had hoarded fall at the feet of the coxswain's wife. Then you wheeled away over the slate roofs, wings spread wide, with nothing in your beak at all.

She still leaves a saucer of crusts on the wall each morning. You come for them now, and only for them.