Fine line tattoo of a ballet dancer in purple ink above the ankle, with the words To dance is to breathe written below it.

Ballet dancer and script on a lower leg

Fine line · Ankle · Colour · Photo

A fine line outline of a ballet dancer in a lifted pose, drawn in purple ink with a small heart shape near the torso. Below the figure, the script words To dance is to breathe run diagonally in a dark purple-black script across the lower leg. The photograph is taken close up against a plain light background, with a white strappy sandal visible at the bottom of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now, you will want to know why the Queen of Misk Harrow wept during the thaw, and I will tell you, but first you must understand that in that kingdom nobody danced. Dancing was for birds and drunkards, the old men said, and the palace floors were laid with grey slate so that no one's feet would ever make a sound worth remarking upon.

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Into this came a girl named Ysolde Pennick, daughter of a lamplighter, who could not stand still. She swayed in the market while the bread was weighed. She lifted her arms over the well as if the water were an audience. The steward had her shut in the chapel cellar for a week, and when she came out she had no shoes, only strips of linen bound round her feet, and her hair was full of cellar dust. She went up the palace stairs anyway, one leg lifted high in front of her like a question.

The queen saw her on the landing. The queen had not laughed in nine winters. Ysolde did not bow. She folded forward, then rose onto her toes, and the great empty hall took the sound of her breath and gave it back. 'Why do you move like that?' the queen asked. Ysolde said, 'Because I would be dead otherwise, Majesty,' and the queen, who had buried a husband and a son in those same silent rooms, did not order her removed.

They say the slate was lifted that spring and boards of pale ash laid down, and that the lamplighter's girl taught the court to bend. Old Maudle, who tells this in the square at Brackwater, always ends here: the words Ysolde painted above the palace door were never a motto for the grand. They were a warning to anyone who would hold their breath. Now, lift your cup, and mind the step.

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