Black linework design of a swirling tree of life inside a circle, with small purple, orange and blue birds perched in the branches and red birds flying above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree of life in a circle with birds

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

A drawn design of a tree filling a circle, with a heart-shaped opening among the roots and branches made of spirals, curls and leaves. Fine black linework builds up the swirls, and small birds in purple, orange and blue sit in the branches while two or three red birds fly across the top. The composition is centred and symmetrical, with the colour concentrated in the birds against the black and white tree.

Botanical Tree Tree of life Bird Swirl Spiral Leaves Heart Circle Root

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the nets. Aye, you too, Jamie, I can see you eyeing my flask. Now, you've all walked past the old tree on Kirk Head a hundred times without giving it a second look. Its roots go down into the cliff like fingers into wet sand, and where they knot together underneath they've made a hollow shaped like a heart. Every boat that left Skerrow harbour in those days dropped a coin into that hollow, and the tree kept count.

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The autumn of the great drift, the Corncrake went out with Ruairidh Malloch and his two sons and the fog came down on the water like a wet sheet. Three days, no sign of her. Mary Malloch climbed up to the tree every hour with a lantern and a fistful of coins, and every hour she came back down with the coins still in her hand, because she couldn't bring herself to drop them. On the third evening, she sat in the crook of the branches and watched the birds come in. One purple, one orange, one blue, perched among the spirals as if they'd been waiting there all along, and then a few red ones came over the top like sparks off a fire.

The birds started calling from the branches, one after another, down toward the bay. Mary didn't know a thing about boats, but she knew that noise. She followed it to the edge of the rocks and kept shouting her husband's name until a dark shape came groping out of the mist, low in the water, with three men bailing for their lives.

So when you go out past the point and the mist sits down on you, listen for the birds. And leave a coin in the heart, for the tree still keeps count.