Black and grey photo of three small fine line birds in flight on the inner wrist, with a knitted sleeve and wooden boards behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three small birds on a wrist

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Three small solid black bird silhouettes in flight sit in a diagonal line across the inner wrist, each drawn with simple, clean outlines. The photograph is black and white, so the ink appears as dark grey to black against pale skin. The hand rests on a knee in the foreground, with a chunky knit sleeve and weathered wooden boards in the background.

Fine line Hand Forearm Bird Swallow Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The swallows went over the pass on Tuesday, three of them, flying low along the wall the way you taught me to watch for weather. I counted them from the step of the refuge while Mrs Aldous wrung out the blankets, and I thought of you on the far side of the col with the mules and that dull grey sky above you. You will laugh that I still keep count of birds, but the valley has been quiet since you left, and counting is what I have.

The refuge is shut now until the thaw. I went up on Sunday with the key your father gave me and found the hearth full of ash and a child's glove stuck behind the stove. Someone had scratched our names into the lintel with a nail, yours and mine, and beneath them a little row of birds all pointing the same way. I did not rub it out. The snow will do that soon enough.

Here is what I meant to tell you. Yesterday the birds came back over the pass, three of them, heading east as though they had changed their minds about the south. I stood in the yard with the bucket and watched until they were specks above the ridge, and I decided that if small things can turn around in this weather, so can a man with a mule string. Light the lamp in the top window if you can see it from the descent. I will keep mine burning every night until the road opens.

Love, Ilse