Fine line black and grey tattoo of a swallow in flight with a thin arrow across its body, on the upper chest near the collarbone.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small swallow with arrow on upper chest

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A small swallow is shown in mid-flight with its wings raised, drawn in sketchy, lightly shaded brown-grey ink. A thin arrow crosses beneath the bird, and the piece sits just below the collarbone on a light skin tone, with a grey camisole strap visible at the edge of the frame.

Fine line Chest Swallow Bird Arrow

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow came aboard off the Lizard with the wind still in the north, dropping onto the wheelhouse rail as if it had paid for the passage. Mags Trevithick said it was the first sign of spring and Dan Pascoe said it was the first sign of a fool, because the birds were a fortnight early and the glass was falling. Nobody argued with the bird. It sat on the brass while we hauled, its forked tail twitching at every shout.

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Old Jory Tonkin kept a pencil arrow on the chart table, a thin line ruled across the Western Approaches from Falmouth to nowhere in particular. His father had drawn it, and his father before him, a course for the swallows back to the harbour wall. When the birds turned, you turned. Jory never explained why, and by the time I was old enough to ask he had stopped answering questions that didn't concern the tide.

The squall hit at four bells. We lost the jib and most of our tempers, and the swallow went off into the grey without a backward look. Jory swore it was done for. He steered by the pencil line anyway, the way you'd follow a man's voice in fog, and at dusk the bird came back, low and tired, and settled on the chart table between his hands. It flew once along the ruled arrow and was gone toward the land. We followed, and we found the harbour wall exactly where the line said it would be.