Black and grey realism tattoo of a raven perched above a woman's face with bobbed hair, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven and woman portrait on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large raven with a detailed beak and feathers sits above a woman's face, which is shown in profile with her eyes lowered. The linework is absent, with the forms built from smooth, layered shading that moves from deep black in the feathers and hair to soft greys on the skin of the face. The design fills most of the frame against a blurred background, with a sheet of plastic wrap visible on the left.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Come closer, the lot of you, the fire's only good for the front row. Mrs Pargeter kept the boarding house at the top of Gull Steps for forty winters, and she never once let a guest leave without a story in their pocket. This one's about the raven that came off the cliff the spring the herring failed, and the girl who was sent up to Cold Harbour to fetch it back.

Keep reading

Her name was Ellen Vosper, and she was nineteen and sharp-tongued, and the village said the raven had taken a liking to her. It sat on the chapel wall every morning, watching her hang out the washing with its head cocked, the way a magistrate listens to a man who is lying. On the third day she walked up the headland with a loaf in her apron and a tin of salt pork, and she spoke to it plainly, the way you would to a creditor. Give back what you took, she said. The raven said nothing. It only lifted its great black shoulders and let the wind lift them higher.

Then the mist came in off the water and the path went soft under her boots, and she understood the bird had never been stealing from anyone. It had been carrying the lamp. Every lost boat from Gull Steps had come home by that light for a hundred years, and the men who kept it had gone off to the mines long ago. Ellen stood on the cliff till the mist thinned, then she lit the lamp herself, and she has been lighting it since.

Mind your feet on the stairs going up. The raven still sits on the chapel wall, and if it turns its head to you, you'll know you're expected.

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