Small black silhouette birds in flight tattooed up the side of the neck behind the ear, photographed from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flock of birds on the neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A person is photographed from behind with their hair up, showing a trail of five small solid black bird silhouettes curving up the side of the neck towards the ear. The birds are simple filled shapes with no interior linework or shading, set against smooth skin. The image is black and grey apart from the black and white patterned top and the warm background light.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud, the Prior has finally given up on the bell tower. Brother Edwin says the starlings have been roosting in the louvres since Lent and that a man cannot ring Vespers through a blanket of droppings. So I was sent up the ladder with a broom and a sack and told to be quick about it.

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I was not quick. At dusk the birds came home from the reed beds over the mere, hundreds of them, pouring together into one dark shape that folded and unfolded above the cloister roof. I stood on the leads with the broom in my hand and forgot the sack entirely. When they settled, five broke away from the rest and went straight over the wall towards the orchard, flying in a neat slant, one behind the other, as if someone had told them exactly where to go.

I have started keeping count. Brother Edwin says that is vanity, and the Prior says that is what the Psalms are for. Five, I tell them. Always five, always the same curve, lifting off the stone like a thread being drawn up through cloth. I have decided it is a sign that I ought to stay on here a while longer.

Tomorrow I begin on the louvres. I have left one gap in the boards on purpose, no wider than a sparrow, so the last of them can find their way in. Pray for me, and do not tell the Prior.

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