Black and grey realistic tattoo of a raven with mechanical plating and gears on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mechanical raven on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large raven stands in profile on the outer upper arm, facing right, with its wings and body covered in mechanical plating, rivets and gear-like details. The linework is layered with soft and hard grey shading that gives the feathers and metal sections depth and a three-dimensional look. The ink is entirely black and grey against a blurred, dark background and bare skin, with the bird filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

No, sit down, the fire's only just caught, and you'll hear the rest before the kettle boils. Old Aldous Penrith built that raven the winter his wife went over the pass to Hallam and didn't come back. He riveted every feather from tin he'd beaten flat on the anvil, and he hung gears in its breast so it would tick when it walked. Brass hinges for the wings. Two copper coins for eyes, because he had nothing else to spare.

Keep reading

Its work was carrying letters across the snow to her. Forty-one of them, sealed with wax and tied under a plate of tin no bigger than a biscuit. Each one came back with the bird's clockwork still turning and a single word scratched on the underside of its foot. Wait. Then Hope. Then nothing at all, only the same grey stroke over and over until the plate was scored through.

The last time it flew out, the blizzard was so thick you couldn't see your own gloves. The landlord's boy swore he heard the ticking stop halfway down the valley. Nobody went looking until the thaw, and by then the road had buried everything.

In April a carter found the raven standing on a dead ash by the mill race, one foot lifted, rivets furred with rust. Still ticking. Under its foot the old man had left his last word, and it was not a word at all, but a small brass key. The carter brought it here, and I have had it on my mantel ever since, waiting for a door I haven't found yet.

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