Black and grey realism tattoo of a cross emerging through cracked skin on a forearm, with Risen and Savior scroll banners across it.

Cracked stone cross with Risen and Savior banners

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large cross appears to break through cracked, stone-like skin, with shaded highlights and shadows giving it a raised, three-dimensional look. Two scrolled banners cross the design, one reading Risen across the top arm of the cross and one reading Savior across the lower part. The image is shot close up with a dark background, and the soft grey shading is smooth across the forearm.

Realism Lettering Forearm Cross Banner Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had split the stone cross on the hill three winters running, and each spring the mason Tobiah climbed up with his chisel and a sack of lime, and each spring the cracks had crept a little wider. The villagers said the stone was tired. Tobiah said stone was never tired, only patient, and that it would open when it was ready.

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His granddaughter Wren, who was nine and disliked being told things, asked him what was inside the stone. He said he did not know. She said she would find out, and that night she carried a lamp up the hill alone, sat in the wind with her back against the shaft, and listened. She heard water moving somewhere deep, and a sound like a shout pressed flat under a board.

In the morning a crack ran clean through the crossarm, and the top piece had lifted the width of a finger. Inside was a dry hollow with a shelf of pale rock, and on it lay two strips of stone curled like ribbons, carved with letters no one in the valley could read. Tobiah traced them slowly with his lips moving, then sat down in the heather. "Risen," he said. "And savior. Someone wanted the stone to remember a thing before we forgot it."

Wren copied the letters onto her slate and took it down to the miller's wife, who kept a book of old speech. By midsummer the words had been painted above the church door, and nobody climbed the hill to look at the cross any more. Wren went up once more, alone, and found the crack had closed, though a fine grey line still ran through the stone like a vein, and the wind moving over it sounded almost like singing.