Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a bird with spread wings above an arrow and triangles, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged bird and arrow on the ribs

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A bird with outstretched wings sits at the centre of a vertical arrow, framed by thin circles, dotted lines and stacked triangles. The bird and arrow are rendered in fine stippled dotwork with soft grey shading, while the geometric elements use crisp single lines. The tattoo is centred on the side of the ribs against plain pale skin, with a grey garment and a hand with dark nails at the edges of the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Ribs Bird Wing Arrow Circle Triangle Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm had been shooting the same arrow for three summers, and every winter the wind carried it back to the wrong side of the valley. The abbot said the ground was cursed. The lay brothers said the ground was only stubborn, and that a monastery ought to stand where the wind allowed it, not where a monk's bow wanted it.

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The bird came in the third week of harvest, a small grey thing with a torn wing, and settled on the bow case as if it had been sent. Anselm had a strip of linen and a pot of honey, and he bound the wing with the patience of a man who had spent his life copying tiny letters. When it flew again it did not head south. It circled the ridge three times, each ring tighter than the last, then dropped onto the stone where the old arrow had fallen.

That night he drew the plan with a compass and a rule: a circle for the rose window, a triangle for the roof, a straight line running down to the foundation stone. The bird, he decided, marked the boundary. Where it had landed, the wind would stop. In the morning he loosed the arrow one last time, and the wind turned aside as if someone had opened a door on the far side of the hill.

The abbey still stands on that ridge. Nobody has found the arrow, but the masons say the north wall never takes the rain, and swallows nest in the bell tower every spring, though not once in living memory have they flown over the valley floor.