Two solid black silhouette swallows in flight on a forearm, with soft, slightly feathered edges.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two swallows in flight on the arm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two solid black silhouettes of swallows in flight, one higher and angled to the left, the other lower and angled to the right. The ink is dense and even with soft, slightly feathered edges and no internal linework or shading. The close-up photo shows pale skin against a warm yellow background, with the birds filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, and mind the fire, because this is the tale of the swallows of Sallow, and I'll tell it the way my grandmother told it to me, slowly and with my hands.

Keep reading

When the old Queen of Sallow went to war with the sea-lords, she had two heralds and no ships. Her brother Ansel rode the high road over the Teeth, and her steward Maud rode the low road by the salt marsh, and between them they carried every letter the kingdom had. Neither herald ever reached the far side of the other's road. So the Queen did a foolish thing and sent word by birds instead, and the birds were swallows, because swallows always find their way home to the same eaves.

Two went out with the seal in waxed tubes tied to their legs. One flew high over the pass, black as a burnt nail against the snow. The other skimmed the reeds with its wings tipped down, quick and low, dipping to the water every mile to drink. Those who saw them said they flew like two halves of one shadow that had been cut in two and was trying to be whole again.

The letters reached their destinations in four days. The war ended in the spring, though nobody wrote down why, and the Queen had the swallows' eaves painted gold above her gate. Ansel and Maud never met until the funeral, where they stood on opposite sides of the bier and did not speak. But every spring after, a pair of swallows nested in the gate arch, one high and one low, and the old men of Sallow said that was the only treaty that ever held.

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