Black and grey fine line tattoo of a scrolled ornament on the back of a wrist, with a single thin line running up the forearm.

Fine line scroll ornament on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small ornamental motif with curling scrolls and a pointed base, resembling a fleur-de-lis, sits on the back of the wrist. A single thin line runs from the motif up the forearm and out of frame, giving the appearance of a bracelet or chain. The linework is delicate and even, in black ink on pale skin against a plain white background.

Fine line Forearm Ornament Scroll Fleur-de-lis Line Chain Wrist

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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

The soot has to be thinned with gum until it runs like breath on cold bronze, and still the captain's widow says it looks heavy. You tell her the line will settle. You have pricked enough wrists in the lanes behind the Serapeum to know that ink wants to spread, and a line that spreads is a line that lies. So you keep the bone needle shallow, lift it every few strokes, and count your breaths between them.

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The design is her husband's mark, a lily with curling leaves and a pointed root, the same shape stamped on the oil jars that come off the Pharos docks. She wants it small enough to hide under a sleeve, and she wants a single hair of a line running up from it, as though the lily were fastened to something. "Like a bracelet that never comes off," she says. You sketch the thread first in red chalk, then in soot, and she asks why it must be so fine. You say a thick line shouts; a thin one only holds.

By the time the lamp is low the lily is finished, dark and even. Her son has come in from the harbour with salt in his hair and stands in the doorway, watching you wipe the last of the blood away with linen. He asks whether it hurt. You tell him the pain is brief and the mark is not.

She lifts her sleeve and studies the lily, then follows the thread with one finger toward the elbow, where the lamplight gives out. "Where does it end?" she asks. You shrug and pour the rest of the gum into its jar. "Wherever you choose to take it." She laughs, and the thread goes with her out through the door, into the harbour dark.