Circular flash design of two clasped hands and two small hearts inside a red and cream ring of lettering, on a dark navy background.

Clasped hands in a circular lettering ring

Lettering · Colour · Flash

The design shows two hands clasped together at the centre of a cream circle, with two small outlined hearts and the words NECK and DEEP beside them. A ring of red capital lettering runs around the edge, reading YOU WERE MINE TO ADORE and I WAS YOURS TO REGRET, separated by tilde marks. Fine red linework outlines the shapes and the circle sits on a dark navy textured background.

Lettering Hand Heart Lettering Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, the fire's only good for another minute. No, you're not getting the one about the lobster boat. You want Morag and the Tennant boy, the one the old women tell when the men are out past the Stacks. Right. Hush now.

Keep reading

Morag was the best swimmer on Sule Varra, and Iain Tennant couldn't swim a stroke, though he'd swear otherwise over a pint in the Ship Inn. Every summer she walked him out across the sand bar to the skerry at low tide, holding his hand, and she'd take him in until the water reached his chest. Then his neck. "Neck deep, Iain," she'd laugh, "and you still think you're a fisherman." He never let go of her fingers, not once in all those summers, and she never told him how much she liked that.

Then came the August the seal pup washed up tangled in a creel line. Morag let go of his hand to cut it free, and the tide turned faster than the old charts said it would. Iain went under and came up spluttering, grinning like a fool, and she was already laughing with him before she understood how long she'd stood there on the bar, watching him sink, waiting to see whether she'd reach for him. She reached. She never forgave herself for the moment in between.

Every spring after that, she waded out to the skerry alone, to the place where the water came to her neck, and set a painted red stone on the cairn. Forty-one stones, by the time her knees gave out. Some say the sea has the rest of them. Some say she still goes out on the big tides. Mind the bar going home, now. It's a long walk back to the mainland, and the water doesn't wait for anyone.