Black and grey flash design of two swallows flying towards each other in mirror image on an aged, parchment-coloured background, in a traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two swallows in mirrored flight

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

Two swallows are drawn in mirror image, each diving with wings swept up and tail feathers spread, and their beaks almost meeting in the centre. The linework is bold and dark, with shaded feathers and bellies in grey tones. The pale, mottled parchment-like background fills the frame and gives the drawing an aged look.

Traditional Swallow Bird Wing Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had shut the pass for nine days when the two swallows came down the flue of the Hollin Inn, which was odd, because swallows leave in September and do not come back until the lambs are dropping. Old Agnes at the bar swore they were the pair that had nested under her eaves for thirty summers. Nobody argued with her. The birds were hardly the strangest thing that week, with two brothers snowed in by the same fire and not a word passing between them since the funeral.

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Osric and Piers had fallen out over a strip of wet meadow below the mill, and each had taken the other's silence as a kind of victory. They sat on opposite settles with their boots steaming. The swallows dropped out of the smoke and dived at the hearth, one from the left, one from the right, wings swept high and tails spread like a pair of folding knives. They met a hand's width above the coals, beaks nearly touching, then peeled away so neatly that the flames did not even stir.

Piers saw it first. The bird on the left had tipped its wing the way Osric always did when he was about to reach for the jug, and the bird on the right had turned its head the way Piers did when he was listening for a lie. Agnes said the birds had been flying each other's paths all along, carrying the same message back and forth, which is what swallows do when there is nobody to carry it for them. Neither brother answered her. Osric poured two cups and pushed one along the table.

By morning the snow had stopped and the sun was hard on the drifts. Two sets of footprints ran from the inn door towards the mill, one from each side, and they met at the gate, where the tracks went muddled and then ran on together, deep in the same stride, towards the meadow.