Black and grey realism tattoo of an upside-down raven wrapped in chain beneath a pocket watch and smoke, shown on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Upside-down raven and pocket watch

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Three side-by-side views of the same tattoo show a raven hanging upside down, its body wrapped in chain, with an open pocket watch with Roman numerals above it and wisps of smoke behind. The feathers are rendered with fine, detailed linework and layered shading, and the watch face is left largely white with grey shading on its case. The composition runs vertically along the limb, and the palette is entirely black and grey.

Realism Dotwork Upper arm Raven Crow Pocket watch Chain Clock Smoke Feather Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The raven has been stamping passports for you since the spring the river changed course, and tonight she hangs off the rail by one foot again, which means the queue at Carrow Gap has started to gossip. You do not look up. Three lorries wait under the sodium lamps, their drivers smoking in the cold, and the pocket watch on the desk says ten to two in its open Roman face, though the clock on the wall says something else entirely.

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The woman at the window carries no luggage, only a grey coat and a folded map of a country that was redrawn in your grandfather's lifetime. She slides her papers under the glass. Her name is Ottilie Marr, and the stamp she wants is the one that lets a person leave a place without ever having arrived in it. You know that stamp. It is locked in the drawer beneath the raven's perch, alongside the chain that was meant for a bell.

You take the key from the watch chain and unlock the drawer. The raven makes a sound like a rusted hinge. She was never really tied to the post, you understand now. She is bound to the hour the line was drawn, and each time someone asks to cross it, the links tighten around her ribs. You press the stamp into the ink and bring it down on the woman's page, and smoke from the watch's glass curls out over the desk.

When you look up, the window is empty and the raven is loose on the sill, shaking out her wings. She takes the watch in her beak, carries it through the barrier, and drops it at the feet of the woman in grey, who bends, lifts it, and begins very quietly to wind it.