Black and white photo of a woman's bare back with two fine line swallows over the shoulder blades and a small script tattoo running down the side.

Two swallows and script on a back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a woman seen from behind with her head turned away, showing two small swallows in flight on the upper back and a vertical line of fine script down the side of the torso. The linework is thin and mostly solid black with little shading, and the script is too small to read clearly. The plain grey backdrop keeps the focus on the tattoos and the bare back.

Fine line Lettering Back Shoulder Swallow Bird Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to Porthcadno the same week the Mary Ellen was due round the headland, and old Hesketh swore the birds knew the tide tables better than the harbourmaster. He stood on the wall with his tally stick notched in his fist, one nick for every voyage he had made, and counted them as they dropped over the chapel roof. Two. Always two. His first mate had told him once that a pair meant one coming home and one waiting, and Hesketh had laughed at the time.

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The Mary Ellen came in on the evening ebb with her foresail in rags and no sign of Pete Carne at the rail. Mrs Carne was already at the bottom of the steps, shawl pulled tight, watching the boat warp against the piles. Nobody said anything. Hesketh went down the ladder to take the lines, and as he passed her she pressed a folded paper into his palm, the ink smudged where her thumb had been.

It was a letter from Pete, written at sea in March, and it ended with a line he had scratched in pencil along the margin: keep the light lit till I see it. Hesketh read it twice under the lantern. Then he looked up at the headland, where the lamp had been dark since the autumn gale, and went to fetch the paraffin.

Next morning the swallows were still there, two of them, skimming the water below the wall. Mrs Carne stood beside him with her hand on his arm and did not ask what he had decided to make of the waiting. Out past the point, a single speck of canvas was coming round slowly, and she began, very quietly, to count.