Close-up of a fine line black tattoo on the inside of a wrist, showing a small bird with a thin trailing line leading to the word Believe in cursive script.

Bird and Believe script on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A clenched hand is shown from the palm side, with the inner wrist in focus. Below the wrist crease is a small solid black bird in flight, followed by a single thin unbroken line that runs to the cursive word Believe. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading, and the composition is simple against plain pale skin.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Bird Script Believe Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday had never once come home late, so when the grey cock failed to appear over the harbour wall by four, Maud Pell put the kettle on for no one and stood at the window with her hands tucked into her apron. The boats were still out past the Mouse. Her son Tom was on the Mary Ellen, and the wind had swung south-west before dinner, which everyone on the island knew meant nothing good by dark.

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Just after six the bird came down on the sill, feathers flattened, a scrap of paper knotted to its leg with red cotton. Maud untied it with fingers that would not keep still. The pencil was Tom's, careful and childish: Mam, the engine has gone but we are holding. Keep the lamp lit on the point. Believe.

She had never trusted a word that asked to be believed. Her husband had asked it of her for thirty years and drowned anyway. Still, she carried the lamp down to the point, past the chapel and the drying nets, and set it on the rock where the light would reach the water. Then she tied the end of Tuesday's red thread to the lamp's handle and let the rest of it run out over the stones, one thin unbroken line pointing at the dark.

At half past nine a boat's lantern swung round the Mouse, slow and crooked, and kept coming. Maud did not wave. She only kept her hand on the thread, feeling for the tug that would tell her someone had hold of the other end.