Neo-traditional drawing of a swallow perched on a pale ribbon, with rust-orange leaves and teal-black plumage, shown as a tattoo design rather than on skin.

Swallow perched on a ribbon with autumn leaves

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

A swallow with a rust-red throat, cream underside and teal-black wings grips a pale grey scroll or branch, with two orange leaves held in its beak and drifting behind it. The design uses bold black outlines with soft watercolour-style shading and small speckles on the chest. The bird fills most of the page, with a red paintbrush and a few paint spots at the upper right.

Neo-trad Swallow Bird Leaves Ribbon Scroll Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow was still on the washing line when Ada came out with the bucket, a curled orange leaf clamped in its beak and another hooked behind it like a torn sail. Nobody in Hollin Bottom had seen a swallow linger this late. By the second week of October they were usually gone, strung out over the Channel like beads off a broken necklace.

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Her grandfather had a rule about birds. They take nothing south they cannot eat on the way, he said, and a leaf is only good for building. Ada thought that was nonsense until she followed the bird down the lane to the mill race. It hopped along the wet wooden rail, pausing at each post as if counting them, the rust at its throat bright against the slate-coloured water.

On the third evening it dropped both leaves onto the surface of the weir. She watched them spin, catch the current and go over the lip one after the other. Then the swallow turned and flew straight at her face, close enough that she felt the air move, and settled on the gatepost with its tail split like scissors, looking at her as though she were the one who had come a long way and needed directions.

In April a pair of swallows began a nest in the eaves of the cart shed. Ada climbed the ladder with a torch to check it. Tucked into the mud at the very centre was one dry, orange leaf that had survived a winter under the rafters, and it was the only thing in the whole nest that did not smell of rain.