Bold black flash design of spread wings meeting a circular emblem with a stylised monogram at the centre, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Spread wings with a central circular emblem

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical design of two spread wings in solid black, with feathers drawn as sweeping curved shapes and sharp tips. The wings meet at a circular emblem containing a stylised letter-like monogram with hatched lines. The image is black ink on white with no shading or colour, and the design is centred with open space around it.

Blackwork Wing Emblem Circle Monogram Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the pair of you, the fire only warms the front two chairs. No, Mrs Pargeter, this is not the one about the drowned organist. This is Ned Tallis and his wings, and you will hush while I tell it, because I have told it to the sea and the sea never once interrupted.

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Ned carried telegrams for the Porthcarrow office in the year the cable went under the bay. The company had a notion that speed was a kind of prayer, so they gave every boy a black bicycle and a brass seal for his pouch: two spread wings, and at their meeting a little round emblem with a letter cut through it and lines hatched across it like rain on a window. Ned polished that seal every morning with his thumb. He said it was the only thing in Cornwall that ever looked back at him.

The gale came in on a Thursday, and the wires went down at four. There was one message left in the office, for the widow at Gull Point, and it said only HOME TUESDAY, and it had come from a boat that was not supposed to be afloat. Ned rode the cliff road with the wind on his shoulder, the pedals fighting him all the way, the wings on his cap rattling like a bird shut in a box. When he reached the cottage the woman was already at the gate with a lamp, and he had nothing to show her but the seal in his palm.

She read the wet paper twice, then pressed her thumb to his brass disc and smudged the emblem onto the back of her hand. Tuesday came, and the boat came with it, and she kept that mark on her skin until the day she died. Ned never did get paid for that ride. Mrs Pargeter, your tea has gone cold because you were listening, and that is the only payment I ever want.