Black and white photo of three small fine line swallows tattooed behind a person's ear on the neck, with short hair framing the image.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three swallows on the back of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

Three small, simple bird silhouettes in flight are tattooed in a diagonal line on the skin behind the ear. The solid black silhouettes have minimal detail and sit on a soft, out-of-focus background. The image is black and white, with the tattoos as the clear focal point against the pale skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Don't stir it with your fingers, Tobias, the stew has been on since the Lizard and it will not forgive you." Mrs Greaves, cook of the Hollin Mary, had her sleeves rolled to the elbow and a ladle in one fist, but she was watching the porthole rather than the pot. Three swallows had come out of the grey that morning, low and tired, and they had settled on the ratlines above the galley hatch as though they owned the spot.

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The boy wanted to know why they did not push on to wherever swallows went in winter. Mrs Greaves told him what her grandmother had told her in a kitchen at Padstow: a swallow that follows a ship is carrying a name home. Every crew lost to the sea leaves a little of itself in the air, and the birds gather it up and drop it at the first harbour wall they see. "So they're not bringing news," she said. "They're bringing the men back to be counted."

Tobias counted them anyway, lips moving, the way he counted the biscuit tins every Sunday. Three birds. Three gone since the squall off Finisterre: Ned Carrow, who sang badly; old Pascoe, who taught him the bowline; and the mate's cat, which nobody liked to mention. He looked up into the rigging and asked whether the birds had counted too.

Mrs Greaves set three tin mugs on the table and filled them with weak tea. Then she unlatched the hatch and let the cold in. The swallows lifted together, turned once over the bowsprit, and went west towards the land, low and fast, close enough to the water that the spray must have wet their wings. "Eat up," she said, and did not look at the sea again until the pot was scraped clean.

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