Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a raven perched on a branch, with a mandala filling its body, on the upper leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven with mandala on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A raven sits on a branch, its body filled with a detailed mandala built from dots and fine lines. The feathers and head are shaded in black and grey with strong contrast, while the mandala uses finer stippling and lighter tones. A partly visible ornamental design sits at the right edge of the frame, and the chair and tiled floor are visible behind the leg.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Raven Bird Mandala Branch Flower Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The raven on the chapel gate of Ysmere has not spoken in three winters, and the lamplighters have begun to cross themselves when they pass it. You are sent up the ladder with a dish of wet oats and a letter from the abbess, because you were the only clerk who was ever kind to the bird's keeper before he died. The bird watches you come. Its breast is the colour of wet slate, and beneath the sheen a pattern of rings turns slowly, as if someone had drawn a rose and then set it breathing.

Keep reading

You set down the oats. Up close the rings are made of tiny dots, thousands of them, and each ring has a name pricked beside it in the old hand. You read the nearest: Tamsin, flood year. Then Hob, the bridge. The keeper once told you the bird was a ledger kept by the first queen, a record of every debt, harvest and drowning in the kingdom, and that nobody had been able to read it since the river changed course. You had taken it for a story for children.

The raven lifts one foot, sets it on the abbess's letter, and waits. You break the seal. Inside is a single line in her cramped hand: the river is coming back, and the bird must be told before the bells. You look at the rings. The newest one is still unnamed. The bird ruffles, and a fine line of black dots slides outward like water finding a channel.

You dip your pen in the ink pot at your belt and write your own name in the empty ring. The raven bows its head. Somewhere below, the bell begins, and for the first time in three winters the bird sings.