Black Eye of Horus tattoo with dotted rays on the side of a ribcage, partly covered by white fabric.

Eye of Horus with dotted rays on ribs

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black Eye of Horus symbol, with a solid eye, brow and curled lower stroke, sits above a fan of fine dots radiating outward. The eye is drawn with solid linework while the rays are built entirely from dots, spreading down across the skin. The tattoo sits on the side of the torso, with white draped fabric and a hand with pale nails at the edge of the frame.

Dotwork Ribs Eye of horus Eye Ray Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock at Coldharbour was already full when we came round the bend, and Dad was shouting at the tiller as if the river had done it on purpose. I stood on the front deck with the boat hook and watched the gates groan open, the water sliding out below us like something poured from a jug. Grandad's eye was still painted on the bow, faded to the colour of weak tea, the brow and the lower curl almost gone under three winters of canal mud.

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He had painted it the summer I was born, he said, so the cut would see us coming and let us through. Dad called that nonsense and kept it anyway. Last spring I found the paint pot in the bilge and a brush with three hairs left in it, and I spent a wet week on my knees bringing the lines back. The eye came up easily. The rays did not. My hand shook every time I tried a stroke, so I took a bradawl from the toolbox and pricked them in instead, one small dot at a time, fanning out from the lid like sun over the reeds.

Dad saw them at Tuesday's mooring and went quiet. He said Grandad had done exactly that, dots instead of strokes, because a line you can't steady is only a mess but a dot is a decision. I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing and went below to light the stove.

That night the lock house lamp was out and the water lay black as slate. I climbed onto the bow with a torch, and the dots caught the beam, a scatter of tiny silver points running from the eye down to the waterline. Up on the towpath a bolt slid back. Then the lower gate began to swing open for us, though nobody had called ahead.