Realism colour tattoo of a perched raven in front of a bare tree and full moon, covering the upper arm.

Raven with moon and bare tree on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large black raven sits in profile on a rocky ledge, with feathers rendered in fine layered shading and highlights. Behind it, bare branches reach across a pale blue sky, and a glowing orange full moon sits at the left edge. The colour is blended with soft gradients across the sky and landscape, framed by the curve of the upper arm.

Realism Upper arm Raven Crow Bird Moon Tree Branches Sky Mountain Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hollis had been pruning the damson at the bottom of the garden since before the chapel bell, and the raven had watched her the whole time from the top of the wall. It was not a friendly watch. It sat with its grey beak turned toward the drop beyond the garden, where the moor fell away into the valley, and every so often it shifted its weight from one foot to the other as if it had an appointment somewhere it did not want to keep.

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She did not care for birds. Her husband had kept hens and a dog and a temper, and the hens had gone the way of the dog and then the temper, and she had kept only the fruit trees, which asked nothing of her but patience. The raven asked for nothing either. It only sat and looked at the sky, which had gone the colour of a bruise fading at its edges, and the moon came up over the ridge fat and orange as a peeled fruit.

'You'll have the lot of them,' she told it, not expecting an answer. 'Go on, then. Off.'

It did not go. Instead it dropped from the wall, opened its wings with a sound like a wet sheet snapping, and settled on the bare branch of the old pear that leaned over the stone path. The branch dipped. Mrs Hollis set down her shears and saw what the bird had been looking at all evening: a loose stone in the wall, and behind it, wedged in the mortar, a tin box with a rusted clasp.

She knew the box. Her husband had buried it the winter before he left, and she had told the parish he was dead so nobody would come asking. The raven turned its head to the moon and gave one hoarse call. Mrs Hollis picked up her shears again, and this time she did not put them down.