Fine line black tattoo of an open book with its pages turning into flying birds, running up the inner forearm.

Open book with birds rising on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

An open book sits near the wrist, with paper pages lifting off it and becoming small birds that rise in a diagonal line up the forearm. The linework is fine and mostly dark, with light shading on the book and the pages. The ink is dark throughout, and the tattoo stands out against the pale skin on a plain, dark background.

Fine line Forearm Book Bird Flying bird Open book

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, all of you, and keep your sleeves away from the fire. My grandmother's grandmother kept the only book in Harrowmere, a great brown thing that lived in a chest beside the church door. Nobody opened it but the reeve, and only on feast days, and only with clean hands.

Keep reading

One October, a girl called Ada Coppin, who could read better than the priest and was tired of being told so, lifted the cover on a windy night. The first page was already loose. It shivered, lifted off the spine, and folded itself into a wren. Then the next page went, and the next, each one bending into a small dark bird that rose through the smoke hole and turned towards the forest edge. Ada had to hold the book down by its corners while the rest of the pages strained against the thread.

By morning the chest was empty but for a ribbon and a smell of dust. The village woke to find that nobody could remember the words to the old songs, nor the names carved on the lych gate, nor how to bake the bread for Lammas. Ada took her shawl and walked into the trees. She found the birds roosting in a single crooked oak, the whole flock of them sitting in rows along the branches. When she sang the first line of the lullaby, the nearest bird opened its beak and sang the second.

She stayed the winter with them, learning the village back one line at a time. When the thaw came she walked home with her pockets full of birdsong and taught it to the children on the green. So if a blackbird in your hedge ever sings you a verse that makes no sense, do not shoo it away. That is a page wanting to be read. Now, who's for the next tale?