Man with crossed arms in a navy T-shirt showing a black and grey traditional-style sleeve, with a bird on the forearm and a rose on the lower arm.

Crossed arms with bird and rose tattoos

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A man in a navy T-shirt crosses his arms, showing a black and grey sleeve of tattoos on both forearms and upper arms. Visible motifs include a large bird with outspread feathers, a coiled serpent around the wrist, a rose near the elbow, and a cage and tentacle-like shape on the upper arm. The lines are fine and engraved-looking with soft grey shading, and the image is shot in natural light against a plain wall.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The net came up heavy at four in the morning, and Nell knew from the way the warp sang through the block that it was not hake. Under the lamp the catch lay in a slick heap: a cormorant tangled in the mesh with its wings folded wrong, and an octopus wound round the whole mess like a fist round a coin.

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"Leave the bird," Skipper Halvard said, already reaching for the gaff. "It'll only die on the deck and stink out the galley."

Nell did not leave it. She worked the mesh loose with cold fingers, one knot at a time, while the octopus slid its arms over the rail and tasted the air. The bird's eye was yellow and furious. When the last loop gave, it stood on the gunwale with its neck stretched out, shaking seawater from its feathers like a wet coat.

There was a wicker cage in the wheelhouse, bought years ago for a canary that never came aboard, and Nell fetched it because her hands wanted something to do. The bird went in without fuss. By the time the sun cracked over the Dogger Bank, the cage hung from the wheelhouse hook and the cormorant had hopped out through the open door. It did not fly. It perched on the rail beside the octopus bucket, wings half spread to dry, staring at the grey water as if counting something out there.

Halvard came up the ladder with two mugs of tea and set one down by her elbow without looking at her. "My father said a bird that picks the boat brings the fish back," he said. Nell said nothing. Out past the buoy the cormorant lifted at last, low over the swell, and the wings the cage had been holding came open all at once.

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