Black linework Deathly Hallows symbol and the word Always in script on a forearm, with watercolour splashes in red, green and blue.

Deathly Hallows and script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black linework Deathly Hallows symbol sits beside the word Always written in flowing script. Soft watercolour washes in red, green and blue sit behind the symbol and lettering, with the black lines remaining crisp. The tattoo is shown close up on the forearm against a plain background.

Lettering Forearm Deathly hallows Triangle Circle Line Always Script Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The three brothers reached the crossroads at Sallow Wells on the hottest afternoon of the year, when the road shimmered like spilt water and the goats lay flat in the shade of the pump house. Death was already there, sitting on a boundary stone with its boots in the dust. It was in no hurry, and it had been waiting a long time for people who were.

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As was its custom, Death offered each brother a gift. The eldest asked for a cane of mesquite that would never break in a fall, and Death cut one from the scrub and handed it over. The middle brother asked to bring his drowned wife back up out of the wadi, so Death took a grey pebble from its pocket, turned it over twice, and gave it to him. Tomas, the youngest, had the least to say. He asked only for a cloak that would hide him from Death until he had lived out his years. Death laughed, a sound like sand poured into a tin, and gave him a cloth the colour of dusk that folded down to the size of a handkerchief.

The eldest was carried off by a flash flood before he reached the far bank, the cane still gripped in his hand. The middle brother rubbed the pebble every evening until the stone wore smooth, and when his wife's face finally stopped coming to him he walked into the desert after her and was not seen again. Tomas lived long. He married, buried a daughter, and kept the cloak folded in his shirt pocket, and each year he cut a little more of one word into the lime plaster of the pump house wall, letter by letter, in a looping hand.

When he was very old, Death came back to the crossroads and found him sitting on the same stone with the word nearly finished. 'You kept me waiting,' Death said. Tomas shook his head. 'I was keeping a promise,' he said, and he unfolded the cloak across his knees. Death sat down beside him, and together they watched the road shimmer until the light went out of it.