Black silhouette of a child holding a balloon, with a puzzle piece pattern on the backpack, over red, purple and teal watercolour splashes on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Child silhouette with balloon on thigh

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a young child holding a balloon on a string stands at the centre of the design. The child wears a backpack decorated with a multicoloured puzzle piece pattern, and the figure is surrounded by loose watercolour-style splashes in red, pink, purple and teal. The solid black figure contrasts with the soft, bleeding colour around it, and the tattoo sits vertically on the outer or front of the thigh against a tiled floor.

Thigh Child Silhouette Balloon Puzzle piece Watercolour Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind on Hollin Gap has opinions, and it takes the red balloon before you have finished knotting the string around Owen's wrist. He does not shout. He stands very still on the loose stones with his arm still lifted, watching the balloon slide over the ridge as if it has somewhere better to be. You shift the rucksack on your shoulders. The jigsaw pieces stitched across it, blue and green and orange, have gone dark with spray from the beck, and you feel every one of them pulling you backwards.

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The woman at the tea hut told you that balloons from this side of the fell always come down in Ennerdale, in the reeds by the boathouse. You repeat this to him, twice, because he likes things said twice. He asks whether the balloon will be cold. He asks whether it knows the way home. You say you think it will find someone kind, and he considers this for a long time before nodding, the way a magistrate nods at a sensible sentence.

The two of you climb to the cairn anyway, because he has decided the balloon can be seen from the top and that is where you must look. Cloud comes off the tarn in long grey ribbons. For a minute there is nothing but the wind and a sheep complaining somewhere below. Then a dark dot lifts out of the murk above the water, turns once, and is gone.

Owen unpicks the knot from his wrist and lets the loose string fall into the heather. He does not look sad. He takes your hand, and together you walk down towards the lake, two small figures against all that enormous green, carrying nothing but a bag full of colour.