Black Devanagari script tattoo on the side of the ribs, shown beside a blue patterned dress held by a hand.

Devanagari script tattoo on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a single line of black Devanagari script tattooed on the side of the torso, just below the arm. The letters have clean, even linework with solid black ink and no shading. The ink stands out against the pale skin, and a blue patterned dress and a hand holding the fabric fill the left and lower parts of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Script Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow came in sideways off the moor the night your father's hip gave out, and by the time you reached the top field the lantern had gone the colour of weak tea. You had the crook in one hand and the feed sack over your shoulder, and the ewes were bunched against the drystone wall the way they always were when they had given up on being sensible.

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Nobody had taught you to read the ground, only the sheep. Your father used to say the flock would tell you what the weather meant if you were quiet enough to listen. So you stood still in the drift and counted breaths until the wind shifted, and the flock told you nothing except that one of them was down, flank heaving, and that the others would not leave her.

You knelt in the snow and did not fight it. Years of wanting to be in charge of everything had taught you that the lamb would come or it wouldn't, and the ewe would live or she wouldn't. The only part that was yours was the kneeling, the warm hands and the staying. The lamb came feet first a little before midnight, slick and furious, and you rubbed it with straw until it sneezed at you.

In the morning you found your father at the kitchen table with his boots already on, reading the ledger he had kept for forty years. You set the lamb's ear tag on the oilcloth between you. He looked at it, then at you, then went back to the page and ran his thumb under a line in his square capitals that you had never noticed before, and he said nothing at all.