Close view of a black tribal flame tattoo on a person's upper back, with a laser handpiece held against the skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black tribal flame on back under laser treatment

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tribal flame design sits on the upper back of a person wearing a light grey bra. A handheld laser device with a clear tip is pressed against the tattoo, and the surrounding skin looks reddened. The image is in warm tones with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Blackwork Back Flame Tribal Back

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had buried the Hollin Gate road by four o'clock, and by six the only fire at the Tallow Inn that would take was the one in the back parlour. Ada Penhallow banked it with ash and watched the stranger in the window seat keep touching the back of his collar as if something there itched. He had come up off the pass with a steel case under his arm and a face like wet slate, and he had given his name as Rafe Maddock, which she did not believe.

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Her cousin Jory had been a tattooist in Truro before he took to the herring boats, and he had left her one rule for snowbound nights: never let a guest sleep with a flame still burning on him. 'They carry the hearth with them,' he used to say. Rafe had asked, very politely, for the lamp to be moved so he could see his own back in the dark window glass. Ada saw the black tribal flame there, all hooked tongues and barbed edges, and thought of the drowned men on the harbour wall who had gone out with fire on their skin.

Near midnight the case clicked open. Inside was a grey machine humming like a kettle that had forgotten the water, with a clear tip that held the lamplight like a drop of ice. He set it against the old ink and pulsed it, and each shot cracked like frost on a pane. The flame paled at its edges, then thinned to a smudge, and in the back parlour the banked fire gave a sudden sigh and leapt up on its own, bright enough to throw shadows across the ceiling.

By morning the ploughs had cut a grey path to the pass and the window seat was empty. On the sill sat the steel case, unlocked, and beside it a folded note in square capitals: IT WAS NEVER MINE TO KEEP. KEEP THE FIRE IN. Ada knelt by the hearth, raked the ashes, and found them warm all the way down.