Fine line black tattoo of four stacked elemental symbols, a spiral swirl, a flame, a stepped earth tile and a water circle, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four elemental symbols stacked on an arm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four separate black outline symbols are stacked vertically on the skin: a three-spiral swirl, a flame with an inner spiral, a trapezoid tile with a spiral and horizontal bars, and a circle filled with wave lines. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design is shown in black ink only against a warm skin tone. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame with a dark blurred background at the left and a shop interior at the right.

Fine line Forearm Fire Earth Water Spiral Symbol Swirl Flame Wave

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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

You find the napkin in your jacket pocket while the vicar is still shuffling his notes, folded so many times it has gone soft as cloth. Four shapes are drawn on it in biro, one above the other: a cloud of three spirals, a flame curling around its own swirl, a tile with bars across its foot, and a ring of waves. Dilys drew them the summer you were nineteen, in the back booth of the chippy on Harbour Street, and the four of you swore you would get them inked together before anyone could talk you out of it.

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The hall smells of floor polish and wet coats. Gwen is marrying a man who fits gutters, and she asked you to say a few words, so you have written them on the back of a bus timetable and rewritten them until they became the shapes. Air at the top, because Gwen has always wanted to be somewhere else. Fire for Dilys, who could never leave a row unfinished. Earth for you, the one who stayed in town and kept the spare keys. Water at the bottom, which Mags chose because she said it would hold the others up, and then she moved to Perth and sent a card with a pressed gum leaf inside.

You stand, tap the glass with a teaspoon, and read the list aloud. When you reach the bottom you say the thing Mags used to say, that water never asks anybody's permission to fill a space. People laugh in the right places. Gwen's new husband looks puzzled, which is fair.

Afterwards you hand the napkin across the top table. Gwen unfolds it, runs a thumb over the lines, and laughs until she has to sit down. The tile is drawn the wrong way round. Mags did it that way on purpose that summer, and none of you ever fixed it.