Small navy blue tattoo of a crested bird perched on a branch with flowers, on the outer upper arm of a woman in a navy vest top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue bird and flowers on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A small tattoo of a crested bird perched on a curling branch with stylised flowers, shown in a single shade of navy blue. The bird's wing and tail are shaded with soft gradients while the flowers use fine outlines and light fill. The photo is taken from the side at close range, with the tattoo sitting on the outer upper arm against a plain pale background.

Botanical Upper arm Bird Branch Flower Crest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crested bird came aboard at Foochow in a cage no bigger than a biscuit tin, and by the time we raised the Cape it had learned the ship's bells and most of my swearing. Nobody else would take it on, so it lived on the rail above the galley stove, where the steam kept its feathers from drying out and the men could pass it a crust through the bars.

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Mr Aske, the second mate, owned a blue and white plate he'd bought in Canton. It showed a curling branch with stylised flowers and a bird perched on it, its crest standing up like a bishop's mitre. He ate his Sunday duff off that plate and would not let me scrub it with the others. On the third Thursday south of the Line, a sea came green over the bow and carried the mess crockery into the scuppers. Every piece went but the one plate, which turned up hours later wedged in the coal bunker, the bird still whole on it, only a chip gone from the tail.

Aske wouldn't look at it. He said it had been his sister's and that he'd rather it went down with the rest. So I took it, wrapped it in a dry tea towel, and kept it in the spice locker where the damp couldn't reach it. Off the Horn the bird in the cage went quiet, and the men said it was grieving, though I think it was only cold.

When we docked in London I went to hand Aske his plate, and he shook his head and told me to keep it for my trouble. I took it home on the train. That evening I set it on the windowsill, and the lamplight picked out the bird's blue wing as it might have looked over open water, and I thought of the little cage swinging above the stove, and of how far it had come to stay.