Black and grey tattoo of a bird in flight with spread wings on the top of a shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black bird in flight on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a bird in flight, with wings spread wide and feathers suggested by fine streaks at the wing tips and tail. The shading is soft and gradual, fading to grey at the edges of the wings and body. The image is a close crop of skin on the upper shoulder, with the tattoo centred against a dark background.

Fine line Shoulder Bird Flying Silhouette Wing Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm had the bird on the bell-tower ledge before the Prior did, which was the only thing about it he could claim. It was a crow or a rook, nobody agreed, and it came every morning at Lauds to watch us file out of the cold cloister with our breath hanging before us like wet linen.

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Our cellarer, Brother Tobias, wanted it shot. The almoner wanted it fed. I wanted nothing but to be left alone with the brewing copper and the sour smell of the hop sacks, because that winter was the longest any of us could remember and the ale was all that kept the novices from quarrelling. One morning the bird took a crust from my palm, and after that I stopped arguing with anyone.

In the spring the Prior sent for me. A convent at Ely had written asking for a man who could carry letters across the fens without drowning in a dyke. I told him I could not swim. He said that was precisely why they had chosen me, since a man who could not swim would at least not drown on purpose. I packed a loaf and a tin of salve and went down the causeway in the grey dawn.

The bird followed me as far as the first ferry. I watched it climb above the reeds, black against the flat pale sky, wings spread wide as a doorway, and then it wheeled back towards the tower without me. It did not look back once, which is more than I can say for myself.