Colour tattoo of a faceted robin in a circle of night sky with stars and a teal glow, on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Faceted robin in a starry circle on a calf

Geometric · Calf · Colour · Photo

A black-outlined robin sits inside a circle filled with a deep purple and blue night sky, with four small white sparkle stars around it. Its faceted orange and red breast is shaded like stained glass, and a teal and green glow runs along the inner edge of the circle. The tattoo is photographed straight on against a pale sheet, with soft even lighting.

Geometric Calf Bird Star Night sky Moon Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's wet from the rain that came off the Don at teatime. Sit where I can see your face. You want the robin, do you? Everybody asks about the robin, but nobody asks why it's sat in a ring of night like a coin someone dropped in the dark.

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When the glassworks still ran along Savile Street, a woman called Nell Hobday swept its floors. Every night, after the furnace was banked, she lay on the cold boards and watched a robin come down through the broken skylight to peck at the lead dust. One January the skylight was mended and the bird stayed out. Nell could not sleep for wanting it back.

So she cut a bird from the offcuts, ruby flashed over clear, leaded piece to piece, and set it in a round frame salvaged from a chapel rose window that had cracked in the frost. She hung it over the bed. Her husband Walter said it was daft to waste good glass on a bird that wouldn't come in. She didn't answer him.

On the night the frost bit hardest, the moon came through the back of the frame and the rim went teal and green, and Walter swore the bird turned its head. Nell went out to the yard in her nightdress. The robin came down out of the stars, plain as you like, and settled on her wrist, warm as a kiln door. She carried it inside and set it on the sill, and in the morning the frame was empty and the night inside it was full of light.

That's the whole of it. You don't have to believe me. I only tell it because the lamps are lit and somebody ought to.