Black and grey realism raven on a chest tattoo, with a flying bird on the shoulder, thistle stems and a Latin banner reading Vulnerant omnes ultima necat.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven and thistles across chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic raven perches centre chest, with a smaller bird in flight on the shoulder. Thistle stems trail across the chest beneath it, alongside ornate scrollwork, a red horizontal line and a banner with Latin lettering. The work uses fine black linework and grey shading, with a small red accent, and the composition spreads diagonally from shoulder to sternum.

Realism Botanical Chest Shoulder Raven Crow Bird Flying bird Thistle Botanical Scroll Banner Latin text Stripe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had been falling on Cold Hebble since Tuesday, and by Friday the landlord had stopped pretending the coach would come. We sat in the taproom of the Bell with our boots steaming on the fender, six strangers listening to the chimney breathe. The only creature not complaining was the raven on the settle beside the old woman from Skipton, who had carried it in a wicker cage and then, for reasons she never explained, left the cage door open.

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"It's Mab's," she said when I asked. "She goes where the post goes, and the post doesn't go anywhere this week."

Mab walked the length of the table, stopped at the sugar bowl, and tapped the glass lid with her beak until it lifted. Nobody laughed. The clock above the bar had a Latin motto painted beneath its face, Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat, and the schoolmaster from Keighley read it aloud as though it were a dare. All wound, the last one kills. Nobody asked which hour he meant.

Near midnight the smell of dry thistle drifted in under the door, sweet and wrong for January. Mab hopped onto the sill, pressed her head to the frosted glass, and made a sound like a rusted hinge. Out in the drift a lantern was bobbing towards us, slow and steady, and the old woman rose from her chair and said, quite calmly, that it was time we all counted the stairs.