Fine line tattoo of a small bird with a red heart above its head, placed on the ankle of a light-skinned person.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small bird and red heart on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A small tattoo of a bird in flight, drawn with thin black linework, with a tiny sprig or plume shape at its head. A small red heart sits above the bird, the only colour in the design. The tattoo is small and centred on the skin, with a pale cloth visible at the edges of the frame.

Fine line Ankle Bird Heart Swallow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow had a sprig of thyme caught in its crown the day Nell Garrow tied a scrap of red cloth to its leg in the net-loft. Her father was out past the Mare Rock in the Cormorant, the wind had sat in the south for nine days, and the boats could not come home and the bread could not come in.

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Everyone in Skerrow knew the old saying about swallows. They fly where the sea has no edges, the harbour master said, and they never carry anything but what they are sure of. So Nell wrote on a slip of paper, Come home, the heart is still here, folded it small, and let the bird take it out over the breakwater before she could change her mind.

It was gone the whole afternoon. She sat on the wall with her chin on her knees and counted gulls. Mrs Pearce came down with a pot of broth and said swallows were fools for weather and the Cormorant would turn up when it turned up. Nell did not answer her. At dusk a small dark shape came low over the water, dropping towards the slipway, and the red cloth was gone from its leg.

Her father's boat came in on the evening tide with the sail torn and one oar missing. He stepped onto the stones, looked up at the loft, and said the bird had found them off the Mare Rock, circling the mast as if it had been sent. He never said who had sent it, and Nell did not ask. She kept the swallow in a box of straw by the stove until the wind turned, then opened the loft door and watched it go out over the harbour while the first loaves came up from the bakery.