Shaded double infinity knot tattoo in grey with a red ribbon band across it, on the upper arm.

Double infinity knot on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows an interlocking double infinity knot, with two grey shaded loops and a single red band passing through the centre. The ribbon has black outlines, soft grey shading that suggests depth, and pointed tips at the top and bottom where the loops meet. The design sits centred on the skin against a plain background of freckled skin and a blue top.

Geometric Upper arm Infinity symbol Knot Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are kneeling in the lee of a boulder on Scarrow Pass with the rope frozen stiff across your knees, counting the lines the way your father taught you, twice, because the second count is the one that keeps people alive. Two grey ropes run up the slope and over the lip, and where they meet you need a binding that will hold them together. The only spare is the red cord Maud dyed with madder the summer before she went down to the valley for good.

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Below, the lamp in the hut window blinks on and off. Anders is still on the north face with the sledge and his bad knee, and you promised the hut-keeper you would not wait past the second bell. You pass the cord through the crossing once, then again, threading it around both grey lines so neither can slide off the other. Your fingers have stopped reporting. You tie by feel, the way you learned on the ridge at fourteen, a loop that turns back on itself and comes out where it began.

When Anders finally drags himself over the crest, he doesn't speak. He looks at the knot, then at you, and gives a short cracked laugh. 'That's Maud's cord,' he says. 'She'd have skinned us for using it on this.' You ask him what it's for. He pulls the red strand taut across the snow and shows you how the grey loops hold each other, neither one giving way while the red runs through them both.

At dawn you untie it on the hut bench, and the cord comes away with a faint crease in its fibres where the knot sat. You coil it up and push it into your coat pocket, where it stays warm long after the frost has gone out of your hands.