Black and grey blackwork tattoo of three solid black swallows in flight across the side of a torso, shown in a black and white photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three swallows in flight on the side

Blackwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Three small swallows in flight are tattooed in solid black ink, each one shown in a different wing position and descending diagonally across the skin. The birds are rendered as filled silhouettes with soft grey shading and minimal interior detail. The photograph is in black and white, with a dark fabric in the upper left and a polka dot cloth at the top right framing the pale skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows left the Sallow Reach on the first cold morning of September, low over the water and then all at once, as if someone on the far bank had called them by name. Father always said you could read the weather in their wings. I counted them off the ferry rope the way he taught me, and came up three short of the summer tally.

Keep reading

The three I was missing had been hatched under the shed eaves that spring, and one of them had a wing that bent wrong at the joint. I found it in the reeds by the slipway, cupped it in my apron and kept it in the wash-house in a shoebox lined with Mother's old handkerchiefs. It ate the flies I caught in a jam jar and tapped my knuckle with its beak. Customers asked whether I had gone soft. I said the crossing needed someone to keep it honest, and nobody argued with that.

In April the shed roof was loud again. The little one with the bent wing had mended enough to flutter from the rope to the rail, and I stood in the cold at dawn with the bell in my hand, waiting for the rest of the flock to come up the river. When the first of them dropped over the reeds I did not ring the bell. I only opened the log and wrote: three swallows, all accounted for.

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