Black linework tattoo of a hand with crossed fingers on the forearm, shaded with fine hatching in an engraving-like style.

Crossed fingers hand on forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with the index and middle fingers crossed is outlined in black ink on the forearm. The fingers and palm are shaded with dense parallel hatching, giving a woodcut or engraving feel. The close crop shows the forearm against a pale, blurred wall and a blue sleeve, with a faint floral print in the background.

Forearm Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamb was losing its warmth under Dora's coat, and the snow had not stopped since Tuesday. Her brother Sam stood at the gate with the lantern, asking again whether the ewes would hold until the thaw. Dora told him they would. She folded her middle finger over the first and kept her hand low, the way their father had taught her when a promise was only half a promise.

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Their father had kept a rule about such things. A promise made with crossed fingers bound nobody, and the cold would not care what you swore, so you might as well swear what you liked. Dora had used it at nine to get out of chapel and at fourteen to tell the vicar's son she would wait for him at the stile. She had never waited at the stile. In the far pen a ewe groaned, and Sam went to her without another word.

By the small hours the barn was thick with the smell of straw and wet wool. Dora knelt in it with the lamb across her knees and rubbed its ribs the way her father had, slow and hard, until it shuddered and bleated and tried to stand. Sam came in stamping snow from his boots and said the first ewe had twins, both living, and that the wind had turned. He sounded surprised. She did not tell him she had only been guessing.

At first light the frost on the barn window had grown into fine dark lines, hatched like an engraver's plate. Dora pressed two fingers against them to see if the glass would give. It did not. She left her hand there anyway, crossed, and watched her breath blur the pattern out.