Fine line black tattoo of a dandelion whose seeds turn into flying birds, running from the shoulder blade up towards the neck on a woman's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seeds turning into birds on upper back

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A dandelion clock sits at the top of the shoulder blade, with its seeds drifting up and breaking into small flying birds that trail toward the neck. The linework is thin and mostly solid black, with little or no shading. The photo is taken from behind against a soft, blurred green background, so the tattoo is the clear focus.

Fine line Botanical Shoulder Back Dandelion Bird Seed Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman at Harrow Ford had a rule about seeds. Nothing that grew on the far bank was to cross in a pocket, and nothing that crossed was to be named until it had landed. Ada Ferris learned this the hard way when her brother's coat came over the water full of burrs and he swore at them for an hour on the stones.

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She was nine the year the border moved east, and her mother packed the last of the bread in a cloth and told her to carry the dandelion clock she had picked that morning, because it was lucky and because it was too pretty to leave. At the crossing the guard wanted to see what was in her hand. Ada said nothing. She opened her fingers and blew, the way her grandmother had taught her, and the seeds lifted in a grey ragged cloud over the river.

The guard counted them with his lips moving. Then the cloud came apart, and the seeds were not seeds any more but small dark birds, a dozen, twenty, climbing the air in a loose line and trailing back over the reeds toward the girl's shoulder as if they meant to rest there. The guard lowered his stick. The ferryman, who had been waiting with his pole in the mud, took off his cap.

They crossed the water that afternoon with nothing in their pockets but bread, and the birds went ahead of them all the way to the far bank, where the first of them settled on a fence post and waited to be named.