Two colour swallow tattoos in a traditional style, with teal wings, pink bodies and orange heads, placed symmetrically on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two swallows on upper back

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

The image shows the upper back of a person with dark hair, with two mirrored swallows in flight. Each bird has bold dark outlines, teal wings, pink and red bodies, orange heads and curling swirl shapes behind them. The birds sit either side of the spine against plain skin, with soft shading in the colour fills.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the wind has finally turned, so I'm writing this on the windward rail with the ink pot wedged between my boots. We are four days out from Valparaíso and the cook has run out of onions, which the men are taking very personally. The mate swears the swallows we saw this morning were a sign we'd make Bristol by June, but he said the same about the parrot that died in Recife, so I've stopped asking him for predictions.

Keep reading

I kept thinking about your father's stories while we watched them. He always said a swallow that turns up on a ship is either lost or homeward bound, and he never could tell us which. These two came out of the rigging together, one a little ahead of the other, curling low over the foresail as if they'd been sent to check the rope. The second one dipped its head at me like a clerk at the counter. I told it the cargo was all tin and no tea, and it went off towards the land without a word of thanks.

I've pinned the page where you can find it, in the back of the logbook, next to the drawing of the bosun's dog. If the swallows are right, you'll be reading this on the quay before the ink has time to smudge. If they are wrong, at least I'll have had company worth writing about. Keep the lamp lit on the landing for me. Your loving brother, Tom.

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