Black ink tribal design of two swallows in flight, drawn in bold blackwork linework on a sketchbook page.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal swallows in flight

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn tribal design shows two swallows in flight, one above and one below, with long swept wings and pointed tail feathers. The bold black linework is filled with swirls, spikes and solid shapes on a pale sketchbook page. The composition runs diagonally from the upper right to the lower left, with the birds set apart on plain white paper.

Blackwork Swallow Bird Tribal Swirl Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came over the flats in the week the Halloran well dried up, flying low along the road where the tar had gone soft. Dorrin the carter saw them first from the seat of his water wagon. One bird rode high above the dust with a tail forked like a pair of shears, and the other skimmed beneath it, wings swept back so far they seemed to be cutting the heat.

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He had been hauling water from the far cistern for nine days, and his barrels sloshed less each morning. The birds did not stop. They kept just ahead of the near wheel, dipping whenever the track forked, and when the wagon lurched into a rut they wheeled back and waited for him. Dorrin, who talked to mules and not to people, started talking to them. He told them about his sister in Pell, the debt on the wagon, and the fool who had sold him a cracked axle.

On the tenth morning the upper bird dropped to the road and hopped in a small circle in the dust, then flew off west, straight toward a line of pale rock he had passed a hundred times without looking at. The lower swallow stayed on the yoke until he reached the rock. Behind it, under an overhang, a seep of water had collected in a hollow stained green with moss.

He filled every barrel and drank until his stomach hurt. When he turned the wagon back toward Halloran, the swallows were gone, but a single grey feather lay on each stone along the road, all turned the way the birds had flown, so he could follow them home.