Small solid black swan silhouette tattoo on the inner wrist of a raised hand, with blue water and sky behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black swan on the inner wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black swan silhouette sits on the inner wrist of a hand held up against a bright sky. The swan is filled with solid black ink and shows a faint textured surface rather than fine linework. The background shows calm water, a pale cloud and a distant shoreline in soft focus, with a warm, slightly washed-out tone across the photograph.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite, the lake has frozen at the edges again and the ferryman swears the castle bell rang last night, though there is nobody left in the tower to ring it. I have taken your advice and gone down to the water every morning at first light, rowing the little punt out past the broken causeway where the old moat used to be. The reeds are grey with frost and the stone of the south wall has slumped into the shallows like a tired animal.

Keep reading

Yesterday I found the swan. It was not the great white bird the children feed from the bank but a black one, sitting on the ice as if it had been poured there and left to set. Its neck was bent into a question mark and its feathers had a dull shine, almost like wet slate. I did not dare speak. When I finally rowed close it lifted its wings, and for a moment the whole sky behind it seemed to tilt, the pale cloud sliding sideways over the ruined turret.

I am writing this with my gloves off, which you will scold me for. I think the swan was waiting for someone to notice it was not white. Come up before the thaw, bring your sketchbook, and we will sit on the steps where the gate used to be and draw it together until one of us gives up. I have left a lantern lit in the gatehouse so you can find the path.

Yours, always, Elspeth

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