Black script reading Don't Blink over a blue watercolour splash tattoo on the side of the ribs.

Don't Blink script over blue watercolour splash

Lettering · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A close view of black cursive script reading Don't Blink laid over a soft blue shape with splattered edges, which suggests wings. The blue is built from watercolour-style washes with darker and lighter tones, while the lettering has sharp, bold strokes. The tattoo sits centrally on the side of a light-skinned torso, with the lettering running horizontally across the frame.

Lettering Ribs Script Splash Wing Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lot of you, and mind the broken step, for it took a carter's hand clean off last winter. Nobody tells you about the angel in the north tower of Carrow Keep, because the wardens scraped her name from the ledgers. Her wings were river water, they say, poured over a frame of ash, and every seventh night the damp came up off the Vellan and gave her the colour of a bruise going off.

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Old Hesketh the mason kept the watch in those days, and he had a daughter called Ione who climbed the tower stair each dusk to sing to the stone woman. He warned her, as I warn you now: whatever you do, don't blink while her wings are wet. Ione laughed. The ones who laugh at the warning are always the ones who test it.

One night the mist came so thick the lamps guttered blue. Ione sat on the cold plinth and counted her breaths, watching the feathers shiver and run. Her lids grew heavy, then heavier. Somewhere below a bell rang once, and she let her eyes close for the length of a heartbeat. When she opened them the wings were spread wide and the stone woman was looking down at her, every feather dripping slow and dark toward the floor.

Hesketh found her at dawn, sitting at the foot of the plinth with her hands in her lap and her eyes still open. The blue never washed out of her lashes after that, and the wardens never did find the ledger page with her name. Mind the step on your way down, and whatever you do, don't blink.