Black and grey traditional style flash drawing of two swallows in flight, shown as a design with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two swallows in flight

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows two swallows flying in opposite directions, drawn as bold black outlines with solid black areas on the wings and tails. The bodies and wing tips are left as white negative space with minimal detail. The birds sit against a plain white background, with the composition arranged diagonally to suggest movement.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The swallows went over Hollin Wood on Tuesday, two of them, flying apart as if they had agreed to it. One dipped towards the mill pond and the other kept climbing over the stile where Father used to leave the cart. I watched from the yard with the milk bucket in my hand and forgot the milk entirely, which Mrs Pell has not forgiven me for.

You will say I am soft. Maybe I am. But the boy from Cawley's farm told me swallows never come back to the same barn if they parted badly, and I thought of you and Tom at the gate in June, and wondered which of those two birds you would have been.

Enough of that. The roof of the stable has held through three storms now, and the nest above the door is empty, its mud cup cracked down one side. I have wrapped it in a biscuit tin for you, though I know you would rather have the letter. Come at Michaelmas if the road is passable. Bring the good scissors with the blue handles, because the hedge along the lane has grown so wild that no cart can get through.

Love, Bess

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