Black ornamental line drawing of a stylised bird perched on a branch with curling scrolls, shown as a design on a white background with no body placement.

Stylised bird perched on a swirling branch

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a stylised bird in profile with a curled crest, perched on a long branch that ends in spiral scrolls. The bird's body and tail are filled with solid black shapes and flowing curls, while the branch uses tapering lines and curled tips. It is a single-colour black design on a plain white background, with a size annotation of 420 mm high by 575 mm wide printed below.

Bird Branch Swirl Scroll Crest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come down on Hollin Market since dawn, and by noon the awnings sagged like wet sails. Tomas Greave kept his stall at the far end, beside the eel man, where the gutters ran brown. He had sold nothing that week except one bird, and only because he was tired of carrying it. It was a black bird, sleek as a boot left out overnight, with a crest that curled over its head like a fiddlehead fern and would not lie flat however the damp got at it.

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The buyer was a widow called Mrs Pell, who sold darning wool two stalls down. She stood under her umbrella and studied the bird for a long time before she spoke. 'It won't sing,' Tomas said. 'It's been quiet since Michaelmas.' She shook the rain from her sleeve. 'Birds don't sing for dry weather, love. They sing when someone gives them a branch worth sitting on.' She pointed at the hedge-cutter's heap by the bins, a tangle of bramble and honeysuckle nobody had collected. Tomas fetched the longest stem. Mrs Pell twisted its tip into scrolls with her thumbs, slow and careful, the way she twisted wool, until the wood spiralled out like a fern.

He set the bird on it. For a while nothing happened. Then the crest lifted and the bird sang one clear note, so sharp that the eel man looked up from his tray. Mrs Pell took her wool and walked off without paying, and Tomas found he did not mind. Every morning after, the bird sat on the curled branch at the back of the stall and sang over the drips, and people came down the aisle to listen.

In December he opened the cage, thinking that was the decent thing to do. The bird circled once over the fish, then landed on Mrs Pell's windowsill three stalls up and stayed. The branch stayed too, curling over her windowbox, and when the rain came the scrolls held the water in small bright beads, and the bird sang through it all.