Black ink line drawing of a circular mountain landscape with pine trees, cottages, a winding path and a moon, framed by the words I could have lived a million different lives.

Circular mountain landscape with quote

Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn circular scene of three peaks, a full moon, pine trees, two cottages and a winding path or river. The linework is single-weight black outline with light hatching on the mountains and no shading, set on a cream background. Lettering runs around the upper and lower edges of the circle, reading I could have lived a million different lives and I hope I chose the right one.

Mountain Moon Pine tree House Path Landscape Lettering Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The post van stopped coming up the valley road the winter the ford flooded, so Mags Trevelyan walked the round herself, a canvas satchel knocking against her hip. By the time the full moon cleared the three peaks, she had delivered to the two black-roofed cottages below the pines and had one letter left, addressed in pencil to Hollin Farm, which had been empty since the Pryce sisters left for Canada.

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She stood at the fork where the path split. The left way ran along the dry stone wall toward the farm, and the right bent down through the trees to the river, where the water shone like a dropped coin. Her father used to say every road you refused was a life you would never hear about. He had said it so often that the phrase had worn smooth, like the step outside the chapel. She had never believed him. She had been too busy watching the lamp in the farm's upper window, which had burned for eleven nights now, though no one lived there.

The letter was from her brother Owen, who had gone to sea at seventeen and never written until last spring. Inside was a single line: Did you take the river or the hill? I have been trying to remember which, and I cannot. She turned the envelope over. The postmark was too smudged to read, and there was nothing else.

She folded the letter back into the satchel and took the river path, the pines closing overhead like a door. Behind her the farm lamp went out, and she did not look back to see who had turned it off. Ahead, the water kept its own counsel, and she walked on with her boots loud on the stones, deciding, for once, to be the one who did not know.