Fine line black tattoo of a feather above an infinity loop, with the script words noah and toby, on the side of the torso.

Feather and infinity symbol with script lettering

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo shows a feather quill resting above an infinity loop, with the script words noah and toby written along the loop. The linework is thin and even, with soft shading on the feather barbs. The design is in black and grey on smooth skin, shown in a close, angled crop.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Feather Quill Infinity symbol Script Lettering Name

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gull feather had come in on the morning boat, tucked inside a crate of paraffin, and Mirren Tully turned it over on the kitchen table while the kettle ticked. Nobody on Skerry Holm wrote letters anymore. The telephone line had gone down in the February gale, and the mainland post came only when the weather let the boat out, so when Mirren wanted to reach his brother Alasdair in Thurso he dipped the old steel nib and wrote on the spare pages at the back of the logbook, tearing them out when the ink was dry.

Keep reading

He wrote about the seals hauled out on the north skerry, about the new lens that flared like a struck match, about the cough that had settled in the assistant's chest. He did not write about the night the lamp went dark for forty minutes, when he climbed the iron stair with his palms bleeding and the sea was the only sound in the world. Each letter went out on the boat, and each reply came back in Alasdair's looping hand, the descenders running off the edge of the page like rope paying out over a side.

In October the boat did not come for nine days. Mirren ran out of paper and began writing on the reverse of the old charts, over the soundings and the rocks marked in red. When the boat finally rounded the point, Alasdair was not aboard. There was only a parcel in a stranger's careful print, and inside it a clean sheet folded around a fresh pen. Mirren read the single line standing up in the wind: The light is yours now. Keep writing back.

He sat down on the wet step and wrote until the lamp came on behind him, the ink line curling round the margin and meeting itself where he had begun.