Black and grey tattoo of two birds in flight with long tails and white highlights on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two birds in flight on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

Two stylised birds with outstretched wings and long, tapering tails fly diagonally across the skin, one slightly above and behind the other. The solid black silhouettes have small areas of white or light grey detailing on the wings and bodies, with smooth edges and little internal linework. The photograph shows the tattoo on the upper back against a plain background with pinkish skin redness around it.

Back Bird Swallow Flight Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shuffle in, the lot of you, and mind the cider jug by your boot. The swallows are back under the lych gate and I will not be shouted over by fiddles tonight, so you'll hear this one proper. You want to know why the Harrow brothers always sit at the back of St Aldwyn's? It's because of Mabel Tennant's wedding, the summer the river ran low and everyone swore the harvest was lost.

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The birds had nested in the church rafters since before the roof was mended. On the morning Mabel walked up the aisle in her mother's lace, two swallows came through the open door and flew the nave so tight that Reverend Pyke lost his place in the psalm. Old Joan Ferris, who knew birds better than she knew her own sons, said a pair flying together was a promise kept, one always a little ahead so the other could follow the road.

Thomas Ash had come home from the coast with empty pockets and a cough, and half the village had wagered he would not last the year. Mabel had sworn she would marry him regardless. When the vows were said, the swallows dropped from the beams, banked once over the pews, and went out through the east window in a black pair, wings wide against the sky. Mabel laughed and said they had gone to fetch the sun, and the bells started before anyone could argue.

They were gone south by autumn and back under the lych gate the next April, and Thomas came out of that winter with his cough gone. Ezra Harrow swears he has seen the same two birds every spring since, one ahead and one behind, and that is why we raise our glasses to the gate.