Fishbone spine tattoo on a woman's back
Back · Black and grey · Photo
A woman in a white lace dress with an open back walks away from the camera across a sand dune, with her long dark hair loose and a sheer scarf blowing out to one side. A black tattoo of a fishbone or fern-like form runs down the centre of her spine, with a fine spine-like central line and sharp side fronds. The tattoo is in black ink only, and the warm sand and pale sky frame it against the white lace.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Nell,
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The bracken has gone the colour of weak tea at the edge of the wood, and Mr Abel's boy came up from the river yesterday with a basket of pike he had netted below the weir. He laid one on our step like a gift, and I stood there thinking it looked just like the fern I showed you last autumn, the one that climbs the old oak by the lych gate. Every frond stands off a single stalk, a bone with ribs. You called it a fish skeleton when we were girls and I told you not to be silly.
I went into the trees this morning with the knife Father gave me and cut a length of that fern, the tall one with the black stem, to press for the church flowers. Halfway along the path I found a fallen branch with the same running spine, grey and clean, as if the wood had kept its own sketch. I carried it home and laid it beside the pike bones on the drying board, and Mrs Pryce said they looked like the remains of one creature that had grown in two places.
Come up at harvest, if the carrier still runs. Bring your good pencils, the soft ones, and we will find out whether the old woman at the mill is right that the fern remembers where it was cut. I shan't press anything else until you come.
Your loving sister, Bess
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