Colourful hummingbird tattoo with watercolour splashes and a thin black zigzag line running down a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hummingbird and watercolour splashes on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A hummingbird in green, blue and purple hovers on the forearm, with its long tail feather trailing downwards. A thin black jagged line runs the length of the arm, with soft watercolour washes in pink, blue, orange and brown spreading around it. The colour is vivid and the bird is shaded with fine detail, set against a plain cream wall.

Fine line Forearm Hummingbird Bird Watercolour Splash Wing Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have counted the switchbacks twice already, once on the way up and once in your head, and the path still refuses to show you where the pass ends. The mule, Pepita, stops at every third bend to blow through her nose, as if she disagrees with your choice of route. Below, the valley has gone the colour of wet slate, and the cloud is pouring over the ridge like milk spilled across a table.

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Your grandmother used to say the mountains keep a ledger of everyone who has crossed them. Each zigzag of the trail is a line in it, and each traveller who turned back gets a neat stroke through their name. You laughed at her when you were small. Now you stand at the last bend with your breath coming short and sharp, and the old story seems less like a story.

At the saddle, where the wind combs the yellow grass flat, a hummingbird hangs in the air beside a scarlet bush, impossibly, in that cold. Its green throat catches the first sun, and its long tail feather trails behind it like a ribbon someone forgot to cut. It holds still for the length of one breath, then it is gone over the rim, and you realise it has been waiting at every turn of the path since dawn.

You unwrap the little bell your grandmother tied to Pepita's halter and, for once, you do not ring it. You step over the saddle and leave the page of the ledger blank, because whoever climbs after you will need to know the way, and the bird has already shown it.