Four small solid black bird silhouettes in a diagonal row on a woman's inner forearm, with a white lace top behind.

Four birds flying on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four small solid black bird silhouettes rise in a diagonal line up the inner forearm, each slightly higher and further along than the last. The shapes are simple and filled, with no shading or fine detail, and the ink is crisp against pale skin. The composition is softly lit, with a white lace top and a floral pendant necklace in the background.

Forearm Bird Silhouette Flying bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

On the island of Hollin, where the ferry came twice a week and no more, a widow named Ysolde kept the lamp at the point and four starlings that lived in the rafters above her stove. The birds had no names, but she knew them by where they sat. The eldest kept nearest the door, and the youngest kept by the cracked pane where the sea light came in.

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One autumn the mainland boat stopped coming. The herring went deep and the flour ran low. The people said the birds would leave before the people did, because birds always knew such things. Ysolde said nothing. Each morning she watched them on the sill, and she saw the eldest lift first and climb a little higher and a little further out over the harbour before turning back to wait. Then the next went, and the next, each one a step above the one before.

On the ninth morning the youngest would not go. It hopped along the sill, shook its wings, and fell back onto the boards. Ysolde opened the window and put out a crust, and still it stayed. So she sat with it until the mist burned off, and when the gulls came over the water she held up her hand, palm open, the way her mother had taught her, and said the old words for going home.

The youngest bird flew. It caught the others above the harbour wall, and the four of them went out in a slanting line toward the mainland, each one a little higher than the last. Ysolde watched until they were only marks against the grey, and then she went down to the slipway, where the first boat of the month was rounding the point with its smoke trailing behind it, and she was ready to be carried over.