Traditional style colour tattoo on a forearm showing two swallows, red roses, leaves and a heart with a banner reading ARNE.

Swallows, roses and heart on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two black swallows fly above a red heart with gold scrollwork, and a cream banner across the heart reads ARNE between star motifs. Red roses with pink and dark outlines and green leaves frame the heart above and below. Bold black outlines and solid fills with soft shading give the design a flat, classic look against a dark background.

Traditional Forearm Swallow Rose Heart Banner Leaves Scrollwork Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mae had counted the swallows twice before the ferry docked, the way her father used to count the boats coming in past the breakwater. Two swallows came back to the rose bed behind the harbour cottage every April, and she had never once seen them leave.

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The garden ran down to a wall of salt-grey stone, and her grandfather Arne had planted every rose in it the year he came home from the Hull trawlers for good. He had painted the cottage name on a driftwood board, nothing fancy, just the word in cream letters with a star either side because he said a man needed something to steer by. Mae scraped the mildew from the board with a butter knife while the kettle sang through the kitchen window.

The man from the council wanted the roses cut back for the new path. Mae stood between him and the bushes with her arms folded and said the swallows nested in the heart of the red bush, which was true, and that she would pay for the path herself, which was not. He looked at the birds, then at her, sighed, and went to find a cup of tea.

That evening she sat on the wall with the board across her knees and watched the pair dive low over the petals. They always came home, Arne had told her, not because the sea let them go but because they had somewhere to return to. She stayed until the stars showed over the water, and left the gate open.