Four shaded footprints in brown and black beside a script quote reading when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you, tattooed on skin.

Four footprints with a script quote

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

Four footprints step diagonally down the left side of the image, shaded in brown and grey with visible highlights and soft edges. To the right, a dark script quote runs over five lines, reading from an ellipsis through to I carried you. The ink is set against warm skin with the text and footprints evenly spaced across the frame.

Lettering Back Footprint Quote Script text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The windfalls had been dropping since Tuesday, and by Saturday the bottom rows smelled of cider and wasps. Nell put her weight on her left foot, felt the ankle fold like wet card, and sat down hard in the dust under the Bramley.

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"Don't be daft," said Owen, already crouching with his back to her. "Get on."

"I can walk."

"You can sit there till the wasps decide you're a pudding." He hitched his shoulders. "Go on, Nell. It's a hundred yards to the gate."

She climbed on because the alternative was a long afternoon. He smelt of diesel and sun cream, and he carried her the way their dad had carried the feed sacks, with a grunt at each step and no complaint. Her trainers swung loose from one hand. At the wall she looked back. The track they had come along was printed clear in the pale dust: his boots, deep and even, every step pressed down, and between them nothing at all where she had been held clear of the ground.

"You're heavier than you look," Owen said.

"Thanks."

"No, I mean it." He shifted her higher on his back. "There's only one lot of prints. Looks like I did it on my own."