Two wrists with black lettering tattoos: Chinese characters on the left and the word firefly in script on the right, both on the inner wrist.

Chinese characters and firefly script on wrists

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two wrists are shown side by side, each with a single black lettering tattoo. The left wrist carries two Chinese characters in a blocky brush-like form, and the right wrist carries the word firefly in flowing script. The ink is solid black with clean edges, set against plain skin and a dark fabric background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the pair of you, and stop fiddling with that lamp. Aye, I know the boats are in and the gulls are still shouting about it, but this one is older than the harbour wall, and it's about Ruth Penhallow and the autumn the fleet came home one boat short.

Keep reading

Ruth mended nets on the slip for her father, and she was the only soul in Porthkerris who wasn't afraid of the Dunmore cook. He came down from the big trawlers that wintered in the bay, a thin man called Wen Tao who smelled of ginger and tar, and he had a habit of writing on everything. Tins, tally sticks, the back of her hand. One evening he painted two black marks on a glass float and gave it to her. He said they meant quiet, the kind of stillness the sea only allows when the person in the boat has stopped asking it for things. Ruth thought that was rubbish. She tied the floats along the gunwales anyway, and because the glass caught the lamp and blinked green when the swell lifted it, she called them fireflies.

When the storm came down off the Lizard, the fleet was out past the Mare Rock with no moon to steer by. Her father's boat was the last, and the men aboard said afterwards that they saw the small green lights bobbing in the dark, one after another, straight towards the harbour mouth. Ruth had kept them burning by sitting on the slip for six hours without once standing up, which is a harder thing than rowing.

That tin of spare floats is still on the shelf in the net-shed, with the two marks on the lid. Nobody opens it. Go on home now, and mind the step, it's slick with more than rain.

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