Line drawing of three dove outlines in fine dark linework, each carrying a word: hope, faith and love, on a textured surface.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three dove outlines with hope, faith and love

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

Three dove outlines are drawn in thin dark lines, each in a different flying pose. The words hope, faith and love are written inside or along the bodies of the birds. The drawing is plain outline only, with no shading or fill, and sits on a light textured background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Pell had counted the crates twice before she let herself look at the birds. Three doves sat in a wicker box lashed to the rail of the Marguerite, grey as wet slate, and the ship was nine days out from Bristol with no land in sight. Her brother had bought them from a dealer in Lisbon for the captain's wife, who had asked for something to remind her of home. Nobody had thought to ask the doves.

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Captain Oakes called them the three sisters, though he could not tell them apart. Hope went first every morning, flicking out of the box to test the wind over the bow and coming back with her feathers flat. Faith would only eat from Ada's palm. Love sat on the lip of the box and cooed at nothing, a rough low sound the sailors said was bad luck, and then they whistled along to it anyway.

On the tenth night a squall took the topsail and the crew bailed by lamplight. Ada went below to find the box had tipped and two birds were wedged in the corner, shaking. She wrapped them in her shawl and held them against her ribs while the hull groaned. When the sky cleared at dawn there was a smudge on the horizon that the lookout swore was Cornwall. Ada opened the box.

Hope rose first and wheeled out over the grey water, then doubled back as if to check the ship was still there. Faith followed, low and heavy, and nearly dropped into the sea before she found the air. Love stayed on the rail, turned its head towards Ada, and waited until she had let go of her breath. Then it went after the others, and the three of them flew east towards the land, small and dark against the pale sky.

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