Black and grey tattoo of two ravens in flight, their wings merging with bare branches, on the upper back over the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ravens in flight merging with bare branches

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two large black ravens with outstretched wings, their dark feathers rendered with soft shading. Bare, twiggy branches run through the birds, and white negative space forms a tree trunk that splits the composition down the centre. The solid black forms contrast strongly with the pale skin and the light lines of the branches.

Blackwork Realism Back Raven Crow Bird Wing Branches Tree Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The second raven landed on the fence post just as I finished the last of the water, so forgive the smudge. Out here on the Hollow Mesa road they follow the traffic the way gulls follow a trawler, and these two have been trailing my truck since Tuesday. Dad always said a pair of ravens meant somebody was keeping an account, and I used to laugh at him for it.

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Past the cattle grid there's a cottonwood that was struck the summer you left. It's dead now, bleached white where the bark peeled, but the branches still reach out as if they mean to grab hold of something. At dusk the birds sit in it, black against the pale trunk, and when they lift off the whole tree seems to rise with them, twigs and all, as though they've been carrying it the whole time.

Last night I pulled in beneath it meaning to sleep in the cab, and found a biscuit tin wedged in the split of the trunk. Inside were the postcards I wrote Dad from every town we never stayed in, all of them addressed to you care of the farm, none of them posted. Someone had sorted them by date and tied them with baling twine. I didn't ask who. I sat on the bonnet until the stars came out and counted, the way he would have.

I'm going to post this from the next town, so you'll know I got this far. Tell Mum the birds are fine. They're keeping the account now, and I think I've paid up. Your loving brother, Tom.