Black silhouette tattoo of small flying figures trailing towards glowing star sparkles along the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flying silhouettes and stars along the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a bare back, with a tattoo of solid black silhouettes of figures flying in a trail towards two star sparkles. The figures rise from lower left to upper right along the side of the torso, with a smaller fragment visible near the waist on the left. The shapes are bold and flat with no shading, set against pale skin in a high-contrast monochrome shot.

Ribs Silhouette Flying figure Star Sparkle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your grandmother insists the second star on the right is the one that matters, and she says it while peeling potatoes at the sink with the window steamed white. You are nine. The island has one shop, one road that loops back on itself, and a ferry that comes on Tuesdays when the wind allows. Nobody here has ever flown anywhere, though the gulls behave as if they have.

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Tonight the wind does not allow, so you stand on the slipway with the tide tugging at your wellies and watch the sky over the Sound fill with specks. They move in a line, dark and flat, as if someone has tipped a tray of cut paper into the air. They rise past the cloud edge towards two hard lights that flare and flare. Your breath stops. These are not gulls. They have arms and legs and hair streaming behind, and the smallest one twists round to look at you.

Your grandmother got the direction wrong. The stars are not on the right at all but ahead, past the black teeth of the headland, and the shapes are pointing themselves that way with the easy patience of people who have done this before. You shout her name. The cottage door is already open, a bar of lamplight across the path, and you can hear the kettle starting to sing.

You do not go in. You take the torch from the hook by the gate, climb onto the wall where the wind is strongest, and wave it in long slow arcs over the water, the way she taught you to signal the boats, until the last dark speck slips into the glare of the star and does not come back down. Then you go in, and tell her nothing, and she pours your tea without asking why you are so quiet.