Black and grey fine line tattoo of a feather with small birds lifting away from it, on the side of an ankle above a studded black shoe.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather and birds on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small black feather with a few tiny birds flying off its upper end sits on the side of a bare ankle. The linework is fine and the feather is shaded with soft grey tones, with the birds drawn as small dark silhouettes. The black and white photograph is taken close up, with a spiked black heel in the lower part of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite, the gulls have followed us all the way from Lerwick and Cal says it means the herring are running south, though I have never once known Cal to be right about fish. I am writing this on the back of a tide chart because the paper in the wheelhouse drawer is damp and the pencil keeps skipping. We lost the spare net off the Dunnet bank on Tuesday, so there is nothing to do but mend what we have and wait for the wind to settle.

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You asked me in your last letter whether I still keep the grey feather from the hen that Ma used to pluck on Sundays. I do. It is folded in the tin with your mother's thimble and the photograph of the boat we called the Hesper before the council renamed her. Yesterday, when the net snagged and Davie went over the rail to free it, I held that feather in my pocket so hard it bent. He came back up laughing with a cut on his chin, and the birds went up off the water all at once, like someone had shaken a sheet.

We are in by Friday if the glass holds. Tell your father the kipper order can wait a week. I will bring the feather home and show you how it still curls the right way when you blow on it, the way Ma taught us, and you can decide whether it is worth keeping. I think it is. Your loving sister, Ailsa.

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