Several people's wrists with small black fine line tattoos of birds in flight, arranged in a trail across the forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flying bird tattoos on several wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four arms are held together with hands clasped, each wrist bearing a short line of small black bird silhouettes in flight. The birds are simple, solid shapes with little interior detail, and the lines of birds run diagonally across the skin. The image is in full colour overall, with bright nail polish on some fingers, but the tattoos themselves are only black ink.

Fine line Forearm Bird Flying bird Silhouette Flock Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last ferry out of Porthkennack left on the turn of the tide, and Nell stood on the quay with her arms folded until the gulls had settled back onto the bollards. Behind her the moored boats knocked softly against the wall. That morning she had counted seven swallows lined up along the sea wall, all of them facing west, and she had told nobody, because it was the wrong time of year for swallows and everyone in town had a sharper opinion about the weather than she did.

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Her grandmother used to say that a flock turning against the wind meant someone was coming home. Nell had laughed at that, the way she laughed at most of the old harbour sayings, until the Morwenna came round the breakwater three days late with Tom Yelland aboard, his cap in his hand and salt dried white on his collar. He had seen the birds too, he said. They had kept pace with his boat past the Runnel Stone, flying low and steady, and when the fog came down they had simply gone on ahead and waited for him where the water turned green.

In the net loft that evening she found the old chart her father drew for the herring years, with a cross in pencil beside every name of a boat that never came back. Tom's boat had no cross. She sat with the lamp hissing and sketched the flock from memory, dark little shapes climbing the margin, and she was still sketching when the first grey light came through the slats.

By the time the tide had turned again, she had pinned the drawing above the door, and the swallows on the wall had lifted off in a single loose line, heading east.