Black ink design of a swallow in flight, with its wings and body filled with Japanese-style waves, flowers and a koi-like fish, drawn on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow in flight with wave and koi patterns

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A swallow is shown in side view, wings swept up and tail forked, drawn in bold black outline. Its wings, head and body are filled with decorative patterns including stylised waves, flowers and a fish resembling a koi, with fine hatching and areas of solid black. The bird sits centrally on a plain white background with no colour.

Japanese Swallow Bird Wave Koi Fish Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows have been gathering on the telegraph wire above Hollins orchard since the start of the month, shuffling along it like people waiting for a bus that never comes. You have a basket hooked over one arm and dust in your collar, and Mrs Pryce is calling up from the bottom of the ladder that the Bramleys will rot on the branch before you get them down.

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The pond behind the packing shed is the only deep water for a mile. Her grandson fed the koi there in July, big orange and white things that rolled their heads up for crusts, and now the surface is pocked with fallen petals. A swallow skims low to drink, dips its beak, and banks so sharply the water lets go of a ring of light. You think of the story Mrs Pryce told you when you were small, the one about the carp that leapt the waterfall at the top of the valley and came back as a dragon, and how a swallow flew down to the sea carrying word of it, because no one else would believe the fish.

You fill the basket twice more and leave the last apple on the lowest branch, the one with the wasp-bitten skin, because it is not for selling. Mrs Pryce watches you do it and says nothing, which for her is a kind of blessing. The light goes thick and gold over the rows, and the cider press creaks somewhere behind the barn.

When you look up again, the wire is bare. The swallows have lifted all at once, a dark handful thrown into the sky, and they are already over the far hedge, heading for the coast and the long grey water beyond it. Behind you the pond is still, and the carp have gone down to the deep part where no one can see them, keeping their own counsel until somebody needs the news carried.