Close-up of a small black fine-line botanical sprig tattoo running vertically along the side of the ribs, with a tiny chevron mark nearby.

Fine line sprig on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A slim vertical sprig, resembling a fern frond or stem, is drawn in thin black linework along the side of the ribcage. A tiny chevron mark sits to the right of it, and a small mole is visible on the skin to the left. The soft, neutral backdrop and the grey loose top at the edge of the frame keep the focus on the delicate ink.

Fine line Botanical Ribs Sprig Fern Stem Chevron Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman's daughter had never once been told to stay indoors after dark, so when the lamps along the canal went out one by one that November, she took the hook from its nail and went looking for the cause. Her mother had said the city kept a lamplighter for every street, and that the lamplighters were the only ones who knew which doors were still open. The gulls had gone quiet. Rain sat on the cobbles like coins.

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At the lock by the tannery she found a stooped old man sitting on an upturned crate, a single fern frond laid across his knees. He was snipping it into lengths with a pair of brass shears. Each length he tucked behind the iron railing, and each length, she saw, had roots that reached down into the wet stone and held on. He told her the lamps were not going out. They were being planted, one stem at a time, so the city would have something green to walk by when the gas ran dry.

She asked him how many stems he had left. He held up the frond and counted the leaflets with his thumb. Thirty-one, he said, and not one more than the street needed. Then he gave her the shears, and told her to cut the last piece herself, the one that would be her own street. She cut it low and clean, and set it at her feet, and the canal lamp above her flickered back on, bright as a new penny.

Her mother never believed the story, but the lock keeper's grandson swears the railing on the tannery bridge still sprouts a green shoot every spring, and that a small chevron of frost always forms on the stone beside it before the first hard night.