Close photo of a fine line black tattoo of a bird with long swirling tail feathers on the lower abdomen, beside the navel.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line bird on the lower abdomen

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single bird in flight is drawn in thin black outline, with a curved head, a wing sweeping upward and long, looping tail feathers that trail downward. The linework is even and unshaded, with no fill or grey tones. The tattoo sits to one side of the navel on bare skin above a black waistband, shown in a warm-toned, close-cropped photo.

Fine line Other Bird Swirl Tail feather Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the pair of you, and mind the kettle, because I'm only telling this once and the tea will be stewed before I'm done. You've seen the painted bird over the door of the Carrick Hotel. Well, before there was any paint, there was Mrs Ada Pell, who kept the boarding house at the top of Lantern Steps, and she had a bird in her back kitchen.

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Nobody knew where it came from. A carter brought it in a flour sack one February, its wing folded wrong and a tail that had got itself tangled in a fishing line. Ada splinted the wing with a lolly stick and a strip of her good linen, and when the bird finally flew, it went up off the scullery table in a long slow curve, trailing those feathers behind it like ribbon off a maypole. They curled at the ends. Lodgers paid a penny to watch it at breakfast.

Then Mr Cass Hollis came up from the harbour office with a purse and a proposal, and Ada sent him back down the steps with his hat in his hand. That was the autumn the gale came in off the Skerries. Three boats were out past the lighthouse, and the lamp had gone dark. Ada woke to the bird hammering at the sash. She opened it, and it went out into the rain like a struck match.

In the morning the boats were home. Ada found one long feather on the front step, scorched at the tip and curled tight as a fist. She kept it in the tea caddy. If you go up Lantern Steps on a still night, you may see a light moving low over the water, with something bright unspooling behind it. Leave your window open a crack. That's all I'm saying. Now pass me the biscuit tin.