Small black and grey fine line swallow tattoo on the back of a person's neck, with platinum hair falling forward.

Swallow on the back of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small swallow in mid-flight is tattooed on the side of the back of the neck, drawn with thin, sketchy black linework and light shading on the wings. The background is out of focus, with a hand resting in pale, silver-white hair and a dark top at the shoulder. The composition is a close, slightly angled shot that keeps the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Fine line Neck Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to Hobb's Ford three weeks late that year, and Mary Tull was to be married on the Saturday before they were due. Her mother called it a bad sign. Her father said swallows kept no almanac and cared nothing for weddings. Mary walked down to the weir every morning anyway, with a heel of bread in her apron, and watched the air above the water for a flicker of blue.

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On the Friday a single bird came low over the churchyard wall, turned twice above the lych gate, and dropped to the millrace like a stone skimmed across a pond. It had a red thread knotted round one wing. Old Ada Crane, who kept bees and believed most things, said it had come the long way from the coast, carrying a message it had been asked to deliver. Nobody asked her what the message was. They were too busy looking for the groom.

Edwin Marl had gone to the coast with the drovers two summers before and had written only twice since. In his last letter he promised to be home before the first swallow and to stand at the gate on the day. The bird lifted off the millrace, circled the table where the bread was laid out, took a crumb from the cloth, and flew east over the hedge. Mary watched it go, then looked down the lane.

A man in a salt-stained coat was walking up from the road with his hat in his hand. Mary did not run to him. She finished tying her shoe, the way a bride should, and then she went.