Traditional style tattoo sleeve on a person's legs, with red roses, a swallow and daggers, lying on a wooden floor.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional leg sleeve with roses and a swallow

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

Bold traditional-style tattoos cover both legs, including red roses, a dark swallow or bird, daggers and cloud motifs. The linework is thick and black with solid fills, and the shading is light. Red, green and blue ink sit alongside black, and the legs are shown from above on a wooden floor.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the snow has shut the Coldhurst road since Tuesday, so the carter can't bring up the post, and I'm writing on the back of the tap-room bill because the good paper went on the fire. Mother says the roses painted on the sign have frozen clean through and the paint has cracked along the petals like old crockery. Father is out in the yard with a shovel and a lantern, swearing at the drifts in the voice he usually saves for the brewer.

Keep reading

The swallow came in on Thursday. I know it's madness in January, and you'll laugh, but a bird with a blue back and a rust-red throat flew straight through the open kitchen door and settled on the copper pan rack as bold as a bailiff. Mother said it was a sign you were coming home. I said it was a sign the fire was too warm for a sensible bird. We scattered crumbs on the flags. It left at first light, cutting the grey air like the dagger your old shipmate used to scratch on the taproom beam, and I stood in the doorway until I couldn't see it anymore.

Last night a stranger came off the moor with frost in his moustache and a bundle wrapped in oilskin under one arm. He paid for a room in silver that didn't look like anything we've ever minted, and he wouldn't say where he'd been, only that he had some clouds to climb down from and a debt to a bird. Father took the silver, gave him the room over the stables, and didn't ask again. This morning the bundle was gone, and the roses on the sign had a fresh red bloom across them, bright as a bruise.

Come home before the spring, Tom, or the swallows will tell everyone on the moor you were too slow for them. Your loving sister, Hannah.

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