Fine line tattoo of a small flock of birds in flight on the side of a ribcage, shown in a black and grey photo of a person in a loose vest top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small flock of birds on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small flock of about six birds in flight is tattooed on the side of the ribcage, with the birds set at different angles and sizes. The linework is thin and mostly solid black, with little shading, and the birds are drawn as simple silhouettes. The photograph is black and grey with a soft, pale background, and the subject's arm is raised while the head is cropped out of frame.

Fine line Ribs Bird Flock Flight Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ines,

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You will think I have finally gone soft in the head, but I am writing this from the stone hut at Scarrow Pass with the stove going and a cup of tea gone cold beside me, because the birds came over again this morning and I wanted someone to have seen them with me. Seven of them, or six if you count the one that kept falling behind as though it had forgotten the way. They came low off the eastern side, where the wind funnels between the two crags, and I stood in the yard with the sheep bells going behind me and watched them climb the gap as if someone had drawn them there with a fine pen.

Father always said the pass was only a crack in the hills that the sky had been sneaking through for ten thousand years. I used to think that was nonsense. Now I think he was right, and that the birds know it better than we do. They do not consult the map. They lift on the warm air coming up the slope and let it carry them, one wingbeat and then a long glide, and when the leader turns the rest turn too, the whole flock going dark and then pale as they catch the light.

I have not signed the papers on the flat in Hexham yet. I know what you will say. But the agent rang on Tuesday and I found I could not say yes, and I am not sure why, except that the birds keep coming back to this gap, and I keep wanting to be the one standing under them when they do.

Come up in the spring. Bring your boots and not your city shoes, and we will walk to the cairn together and count them. If we reach six before they clear the ridge, you owe me a pie.

Your loving sister, Marit