Close-up photograph of a colour tattoo of a castle silhouette in teal, blue, purple and red beneath a fine black arc, on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Castle silhouette under a black arc

Other · Mixed · Photo

A castle with a central spire and smaller towers sits inside a thin black arc. The castle is filled with teal, blue and purple, with red and purple horizontal bands along its base. The soft, close-up framing shows the tattoo centred on a warm-toned area of skin.

Other Castle Arch Spire Tower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, I know it's gone two and you'll be asleep with the telly muttering, but I'm writing this on the back of a drug chart because the ward has finally gone quiet and Mrs Okafor in bay four has stopped asking for her husband. It's been that sort of night.

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Around midnight a boy of about seven came up from Accident and Emergency with a split chin and a plastic bag of frozen peas. He wouldn't let anyone touch him until somebody found him a biro. So I gave him one and a sheet from the menu pad, and he drew a castle while the doctor stitched him. An arch of black line curving over the top like a rainbow that had lost its nerve. Inside it, a tall spire, a green flag on top, and little towers in teal and blue and purple, stacked like a row of thimbles. Two red stripes along the bottom, then a purple one, as if the castle was sitting on a flag it hadn't chosen. He told me it was where his gran lives, in a town called Morrowmere, and she keeps the key on a ribbon round her neck.

Sister Crane said the drawing was against policy, then took it off him anyway and pinned it above the drugs cupboard. When his dad came to collect him at half five, the boy asked for it back, and I told him I'd keep it safe for the next time he needed a castle. He looked at me like I'd promised him a horse.

I walked out into the car park as the sky went the colour of weak tea. The biro had left blue on my thumb, and I traced the black arch with it on my own palm until it smudged. Come on Sunday. I'll show you the castle. Love, Nadia