Small black silhouette tattoo of three birds in flight on the upper back of a woman with blonde hair, photographed from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three birds in flight on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with blonde hair is photographed from behind, one hand resting on her neck and wearing a grey off-shoulder top. Three small black silhouette birds sit on her upper back near the shoulder blade, with simple solid shapes and no shading. The warm skin tones and dark background make the black ink stand out.

Back Bird Silhouette Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewes are bawling by the time you reach the top gate, and the frost has got into the ruts so the quad slides sideways on the lane. You have a sack of cake on your shoulder and a torch you don't need yet, because the sky over Hollin Moor still holds a bruise of light. Your father used to say the rooks knew the weather before the radio did. Nobody on this farm has listened to the radio since the aerial came down in the storm of ninety-six.

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Halfway across the top field you stop, because three birds are coming in low from the reservoir, black against the pale band of the sky. They are not rooks. You know that by the way they hold their wings, stiff and then loose, like someone shaking out a wet sheet. They pass over the broken wall, drop a little, and then bank so sharply that for a moment they look like a single shape cut from paper and then folded.

Your sister rang on Sunday from Leeds to say she was selling the flat, and she said it the way she used to tell you the dog had got into the bins. You told her the farm wasn't going anywhere. She said that was the trouble. You didn't argue. Now you watch the three birds settle on the telegraph pole beside the gate, each one a small dark stroke, and you think about how little space they need to be seen.

You tip the cake into the trough, and the ewes shove and steam. When you look up the birds have gone, and there is only the wire humming and the cold coming up through your boots. You leave the gate open behind you, which your father would have had something to say about, and you walk home without the torch, following the pale line of the lane by feel.