Black ink silhouette of a raven with spread wings and talons tucked below, drawn with ragged brushed edges on a pale grey background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven in flight silhouette

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black silhouette of a raven in flight, with wings spread wide and feet drawn up beneath the body. The edges of the wings and tail are ragged and broken, like dry brush or spattered ink, while the body is a smooth dark mass. The bird sits centred on a plain light grey background with no other elements.

Raven Crow Bird Wing Silhouette Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lorry stopped at the barrier with its hazard lights ticking, and Dorota Ilić leaned out of the booth to see why the driver hadn't wound his window down. Beyond the wire the moor ran black to the ridge. On the fence post nearest the booth a raven sat with its feathers puffed against the drizzle, and it did not look away from the cab even when the driver did.

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Papers first. Tinned pears, forty cases, a consignment note stamped in a language she had learned only to read. She ran her torch along the seals and checked the number twice. The raven dropped from the post, skimmed the bonnet with its wings broken open at the tips, and settled on the wiper arm. The driver made the sign of the cross. He said it had followed the truck from the last village, eleven kilometres back, and would not be shaken off. Her grandmother used to say the crows of the old customs house carried names across the line, one each, for people who could not pay the fee to cross themselves.

She opened the rear door anyway. The pears were real. Wedged behind them was a canvas sack, and inside it a bundle of letters tied with string, every envelope addressed to a house on the far side in handwriting she half recognised from her mother's. Procedure said seize and log. The raven tapped its beak against the glass. She stamped every envelope with the transit mark, one after another, until her palm ached.

When she came back to the booth the bird had gone. She found a single feather caught in the barrier's hinge, black and ragged at the edge as if torn from something larger, and she lifted the arm and waved the lorry through.