Black and white design of two facing ravens with spiral eyes and wings, framed by Celtic knotwork in a circle, shown as a drawn tattoo design with no body part visible.

Twin ravens with spirals and knotwork

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

Two stylised ravens face outwards from a central spiral, their heads and wings formed from bold black shapes with white inlines. Interwoven Celtic knotwork forms the lower edges and fills the sides of the circular composition. The design uses solid black areas, fine white lines and spirals with no colour.

Blackwork Raven Bird Spiral Knotwork Circle Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ravens had been quarrelling on the harbour wall since before the boats went out, and Maud Tulloch knew from their croaking that the Gannet was late. Muninn, the one with the chipped beak, kept dropping mussel shells on the flags and staring at her with one bright eye, as if she had been the one who left the nets in the water. Huginn only tilted his head and said nothing, which was worse.

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Maud had been mending nets since she was nine, and her mother had taught her that a net was just a knot repeated until it became a wall against the sea. She worked the twine through her fingers now, over and under, the old figure-of-eight loops her hands knew without her, while the wind pulled at her shawl. Every knot was a promise that held something back. She had tied a hundred thousand of them, and not one had ever let her sleep.

When the Gannet's sail finally rounded the Skerry, the ravens rose together. They climbed in a tight spiral above the bay, wings nearly touching, and she counted their turns the way her mother had counted stitches: one, two, three, until the birds dropped low over the water and then flew straight back to her as if they had been sent with a message. Muninn landed at her feet and pushed a wet strip of blue cloth towards her boot with his beak.

Maud picked it up. It was Davie's scarf, tied in a knot she had taught him herself. She sat down on the wall with the twine still in her lap, and the birds settled on either side of her like a pair of clasps, waiting for her to say something that would make the sea give him back, or not.