Dandelion turning into birds with quote

Black and grey · Flash

A dandelion stem rises from the lower left and its seed head breaks apart into a scatter of small black bird silhouettes drifting up and to the right. The handwritten script quote is set in black italic lettering across the upper and right sides of the composition. The image is entirely black ink on a white background, with bold silhouettes and no shading gradients.

Dandelion Bird Seed Quote Script Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming down on the fish market at Harrowgate since before dawn, and Mabel Fenn was still selling dandelion clocks from the corner stall when the bell over the gate rang for closing. Nobody bought them in wet weather. She kept at it anyway, because her brother Tom had always said a clock sold was a wish let loose, and she had a few wishes of her own.

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A boy came under the awning with his collar up and asked what the white balls were for. She gave him the old instructions: blow hard, count your breaths, and whatever number you reach is the number of years you will be given. He counted, blew, and the seeds lifted off the stalk in a gust that surprised them both, breaking apart into a flock of small dark birds that wheeled over the stalls and out past the slate roofs towards the river.

The boy watched them go and said his grandmother had gone quiet in the spring, and that he did not know where she had gone. Mabel did not answer for a while. Then she took a clock from the bucket, pressed it into his cold hands and told him to carry it home inside his coat so the rain would not spoil it. Whatever you cannot keep in your hand, she said, you can still send after them, and they will find the way.

He went off up the wet hill with the clock held against his chest. When Mabel packed up the stall an hour later, the rain had thinned to nothing, and a few small birds sat along the gutter opposite, shaking water from their wings, as if they were waiting for someone to count them.