Black and grey swallows and a fine script line running down the spine on a woman's upper back, shown from behind.

Swallows and script down the spine

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's bare back, seen from behind with her hair in a loose bun, shows two shaded swallows in flight near the upper back and shoulder blade. A long, thin line of script runs vertically down the spine, ending near the waistband of her dark jeans. The image is in soft black and grey tones against a pale background, with the tattoo sitting in the centre of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Back Swallow Bird Script Quote Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to the net loft the same week the Mary Ann was tarred, and Tom Pascoe swore they were the same two birds that had left in October, tails forked like a pair of shears. Nell laughed at him for talking to birds. He said a man who has been out past Scarrow Rock in March will talk to anything that flies straight.

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That March the herring came in late and thick, and the sky turned the colour of wet slate by noon. Tom was three miles off the point when the wind backed round and the swell came up short and steep. He had given up on the oars and was bailing with his cap when two dark shapes dropped low over the water ahead, dipping and tilting, always a boat's length in front. He followed them through the rain, past the black teeth of the rocks, until the harbour wall rose grey out of the murk and the swallows peeled off into the loft door.

Nell was on the quay with the lamp unlit, having stopped expecting him by dark. She had kept a tally on the doorframe, one nick per day, and when he came up the steps dripping she said nothing at all. She just took his hand and walked him up the hill without letting go.

In the morning the loft was quiet. The nest over the bench had a fresh cup of mud stuck to the beam, still soft to the thumb, and a scrap of Nell's handwriting pinned beside it: Come home by the same road you went out on. Tom read it twice and understood it was meant for him. He left the scrap where it was, so the birds could read it too.