Fine line black script tattoo forming a ring on the upper back, with the wearer's hair in a bun above it.

Circular script tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A ring of thin black glyph-like marks, with small curls and dots, sits in an open circle on the upper back. The linework is fine and even, and the ink is solid black against pale skin. The photograph is taken from behind, with a bun of purple-streaked hair above the design.

Find an artist for this

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

Sit closer, the lamp is not for the moths. You want to know what the ring says? Nobody knows, not truly. My grandmother's grandmother walked the Kessel road with a smith called Orrin Vael, who carried a band of grey iron in a pouch against his ribs. Round the edge of it he had cut a line of letters, small and curling, and every one of them ran into the next like wind through reeds.

Keep reading

The caravans paid him to read it aloud at the wells. He never would. He said a script that goes all the way round has no first letter and no last, so whoever reads it must start somewhere, and wherever they start is where they will stay. On the twelfth night a boy from the salt camp bet him a goat that he could read it straight through. The boy walked the ring with his finger, lips moving, and when his finger came back to the start he found he had been walking the road in circles all along.

Orrin laughed, took the ring back, and dropped it into the sand between two stones. By morning the boy was gone, the goat was gone, and the wind had smoothed the tracks flat. Only the ring remained, lying face up, and the letters had changed. They now spelled the boy's name, and beneath it the single word for going home.

Some say you can still find it on the Kessel road, if you walk far enough without looking down. I have never looked. Drink your tea, and mind where you start.

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