Seven swan designs on a flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

A numbered flash sheet showing seven swan designs, with the birds shown in different poses, some swimming and some with wings raised. The designs range from loose, sketch-like grey shading and bold brush strokes to clean, continuous outlines with minimal detail. All are drawn in black ink and grey tones on a white background.

Swan Feather Wing Bird Neck Water

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wasps had given up on the windfalls by the time Nell carried the last crate down to the mill pond, and the water had gone the colour of weak tea under the poplars. Her uncle had said the cob would be gone before the leaves turned, that swans never stayed where the reeds were cut. She set the crate on the bank and searched the far side for the pale shape that should have been there.

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He was there, between the lily pads and the broken hurdle. Only one. The pen and the grey cygnets had gone upriver in July with the rest of the family, and the cob sat low and still, his neck folded back over his shoulders like a question nobody had yet asked him. When he lifted his wings the feathers stood up in ragged fans, dark at the tips, and for a moment the whole pond seemed to shiver with them before he settled again.

Nell had brought bread, which was a mistake, because her uncle had forbidden it years ago on account of the rats. She tore the heel anyway and held it out flat on her palm. The swan considered her, then the apples knocking softly against the sluice gate, then the bread. He turned his head away from the bread and paddled towards the nearest windfall.

She let the crust drop, pulled a bruised Discovery from the crate and tossed it out. It turned slowly on the brown water, and the swan lowered his neck to meet it, a long white curve closing like a letter folded shut.