Painted design of a blue and purple swallow in flight with a green-tinged chest, drawn on a white background.

Swallow in flight, watercolour style

Colour · Flash

A swallow is shown mid-flight, facing left, with its wings swept up and back. The outlines are dark and fairly bold on the body and wings, while the feathers are softened with blended washes of blue, violet and pink. The colour is concentrated on the bird with a yellow-green wash on the chest and a soft blue haze behind the head, all set on an otherwise empty white background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to the harbour wall the same week the Marguerite was due, and Dora Pell took it as a sign the sea had finally stopped being cross with her. She counted them from the scullery window while the kettle wheezed. Eleven that morning, eleven again at noon, always swooping low over the tar-black water as if they were stitching the bay shut.

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Her brother Ned had sailed on the Marguerite in March, a boy of nineteen with a blue cap and a pocketful of bullseyes for the mate's children. The letter that came after said the wind had been kind until it wasn't. Nothing after that. Dora kept his cap on the hook by the back door and told the boarders it was for luck.

On the Thursday a stranger came up the lane with a sea bag over one shoulder and sunburn on his cheeks, asking for a room with a view of the water. He signed the book as E. Pell. Dora dropped the spoon she was holding. He grinned at her the way Ned always had, half apology, half dare, and said the sea had been greedy but had spat him out on a beach near Falmouth with nothing but his boots and a bird tattooed on his arm, a swallow flying home, the sailors called it, though he'd got it in Lisbon for no reason he could remember.

Dora poured him tea and watched the swallows dip past the window. Some birds, she thought, were only ever going one way, and some were going home. She pushed the sugar bowl across the table and did not ask him a single question until the cup was empty.

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