Black and grey photo of five small solid bird silhouettes in flight tattooed down the back of a woman's neck, with her hair tied up.

Five birds in flight on the neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

Five small solid black bird silhouettes in flight form a loose diagonal line from the nape of the neck towards the upper back. The birds are filled in with solid black ink and have no interior linework or shading. The photograph is black and grey, with the subject's head turned away from the camera and a black top strap visible across the shoulders.

Neck Bird Flight Flock Neck Upper back

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last train to Carlisle had been cancelled twice, so Margit sat on the bench under the clock with a paper cup of tea going cold between her knees. Across the platform a pigeon was working at a dropped crust with the seriousness of a clerk. She had counted the birds on the departure board that morning, a habit from her father, who said a station was only a tree that people had agreed to stand under. Five swallows, he would have said, was a good omen for a journey. She had never believed him, but she liked the number.

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A guard came through shaking a bell that wasn't needed, and the pigeon lifted with a clatter that made a boy drop his crisps. Margit watched it go up past the iron girders where the pigeons nested, and then, to her surprise, four more rose after it from the gutter above the buffet, black against the grey roof, not hurrying, falling into a line as if someone had chalked it on the air. They climbed over the car park and the bus shelters and were gone over the river before she had finished blinking.

Her train came in eleven minutes late. She stood, brushed crumbs from her coat, and picked up her case. On the step of the carriage she looked back once, and the sky over the platform was empty except for a single bird turning slowly above the clock, as if it had stayed behind to see her off.