Black fine line infinity symbol with three birds in flight and the word Always in script, shown as a temporary tattoo on the inner wrist.

Infinity symbol with three birds and Always script

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Flash

A design drawing of an infinity symbol with three bird silhouettes flying off one loop and the word Always written in cursive script along the other. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the image is monochrome on a white background. Lower panels show the same design as a printed temporary tattoo on sheets over grass and applied to a wrist.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Infinity Bird Always Script Temporary tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last ferry from Inchmarrow leaves at four, and you have already missed the first two chances to be sensible about it. Mrs Doyle at the shop wraps the tinned peaches in newspaper and tells you the gulls are early this year, which means a storm, which means you should stay. You don't argue. You have learned that the island says the same thing to everyone who tries to go.

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Your father kept the signal lamp on the north point for thirty-one years. He used to say the birds knew the weather better than the wireless forecast, and that when three of them broke from the cliff together you should watch which way they turned. Three sharp shapes went over the harbour this morning, wings pulled tight, and none of them turned at all. They just kept going out past the skerries as if the sea were a road they had agreed upon.

The boat's horn sounds twice. You carry the case down the slipway, stones sliding under your boots, and at the bottom the deckhand holds out his hand without looking at you, the way men do when they have seen a hundred leavers. Take it. Let the rope go slack behind you.

Out past the breakwater you look back once. The lamp is already lit on the north point, turning slow, marking nothing you can see yet. Above the cliff the birds come round in a long loop, back to where they started, and you understand that they have never once been lost.