Black and grey shaded tattoo of a hummingbird and a lily with leafy swirls, placed on the side of the body.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hummingbird and lily on the side

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A hummingbird in flight faces a lily with curling leaves and stems, all rendered in soft grey shading. The linework is delicate, with feathered detail on the wings and petals. The design is shown in black and grey against pale skin, with the body curving across the frame.

Realism Botanical Other Hummingbird Lily Flower Leaves Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The signalman's wife at Hollin Cross kept a lily bulb in a tin on the sill, and every morning she watered it before the first down train, because the bulb had come from her brother in Cornwall and he had not written since the spring. The station was too small for a name board anyone bothered to repaint. Passengers got off, looked about, and got back on.

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One August a hummingbird came in through the open ticket hatch. Nobody in Hollin Cross had seen one before. The stationmaster swore it had come off a ship from Calcutta with a cargo of silk. It hung over the lily tin, its wings a blur, and would not be shooed. The signalman's wife said it was thirsty, so she tipped a little water into the lid of the tin, and the bird drank from the curled edge of the leaves as though they had been made for that purpose.

Each morning after that it came back. It fed from the lily, then flew the length of the platform and back again, as if counting the rails. When the brother's letter finally arrived, it was only a single line saying he would come on the Thursday train. The bird went quiet and sat on the highest stem with its wings folded.

On Thursday the train came in with steam to the rafters. Only a thin man with a carpet bag stepped down. The bird lifted, circled once over the platform, and dropped straight through the open door of the signal box, and was never seen again. The next morning the signalman's wife found the lily in bloom, its petals turned up to the light like a face that had been waiting.