Black stylised flash design of two bird heads on curving necks joined to a tapering tail with a spade tip, shown on a plain grey background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised bird and serpent motif

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black ornamental design with two bird-like heads facing outwards, their long curved necks merging into a central form with a pointed lower tip. A thin highlight line follows parts of the shapes, and a tail ends in a spade-shaped curl at the lower right. The design is shown flat, with no shading or colour, against a muted grey-green background.

Bird Serpent Ornament Tail Spade

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had held the Tarn Farm pond for eleven weeks when Mabel Reddy went down to break the ice for the ewes and found two birds standing on it, their necks crossed like the handles of a pair of tongs. They were black as wet coal, and neither moved when she shouted at them.

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Her father had always said such birds were the wintering souls of the drowned, and that they would bargain if you were honest about the price. Mabel did not believe him, but she was out of hay and out of patience, so she set down the bucket and asked what they wanted. The nearer bird turned its head with a small click, and the other unwound its neck from its partner's until the two became one long shape that ran down into the ice like a tail. At its end a spade of black curled up, the way a bramble curls when it has caught something.

'Your ewes for my tongue,' it said, though its beak did not open. 'Every lamb born on this ground until the thaw.' Mabel thought of the eleven lambs she had lost in the snow, and she said no. The birds laughed without sound and let the frost go. In the morning the pond had split along its middle, steam was rising off the black water, and the ewes were fed.

When the thaw came she found a feather pressed flat into the mud by the gate, its quill forked like a serpent's tongue, and she kept it in the tin with her mother's teeth. Every spring after, she left the first pail of milk at the water's edge, and the water took it without a ripple.