Two forearms resting on a white sheet, each with fine line black script tattoos, including the words always in flux and float, and a small arrow on the left forearm.

Fine line script and arrow tattoos on two forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms rest palms up on a light sheet, showing several small black fine line tattoos. The left arm has the words always in flux in small serif lettering, a thin arrow along the forearm, a small outlined heart and a tiny crescent near the wrist. The right arm shows the word float in looping script and a few lines of very small text above the wrist, with a bracelet and chains on the wrist and a tiny mark on one finger.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Hand Script Lettering Arrow Heart Crescent moon Forearm Bracelet

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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

Sit down by the stove, the pair of you, you're dripping on my good boards. The boat won't leave before the tide turns, so you may as well hear how the border came to be where it is. My grandmother ran the ferry on this stretch when the customs hut stood on the far bank, and the river was never the same width two summers running. She told the officers the water had its own ideas about where a line should go, and they wrote that down because it was easier than arguing with her.

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One November a woman came down the towpath with a tin under her arm and a paper tag tied to its handle. The tag said only float, in pencil, and under it a little crescent drawn like a thumbnail. She had no papers that would satisfy the hut, and the officer on duty was asleep, so my grandmother took the tin, opened it, and found nothing inside but a folded map of a village that no longer existed on either side. The river had taken it years before. My grandmother said the woman was welcome to cross, but the map would have to cross on its own.

So they set the map on the water with a stone wrapped in wax to keep it upright, and it turned slowly in the eddy, always moving, never going quite where it was pointed. The next spring the bank collapsed under the hut, and the post had to be rebuilt on the near side. The officer who came to measure the damage found a sodden paper in the reeds, stamped at the corner with a small arrow pointing upstream. He stamped it again, and wrote in the ledger that the border had shifted by one bend of the river, which was true, and which was the only correct line anyone ever drew on that water.