Fine line black tattoo of two hands cupping a crystal ball with stars and a crescent moon on an arm, with a butterfly and leaves tattooed nearby.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hands holding a crystal ball with stars

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two outlined hands with long nails cup a crystal ball containing a crescent moon and small stars, with dotted cuffs at the wrists. The thin, even black linework has no shading, and the design sits centrally on the arm. Partial butterfly and leaf tattoos appear at the edges of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Hand Moon Star Butterfly Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The ball came in on the 6.40 from Crewe, wrapped in a tea towel and tied with garden string, and nobody has claimed it in three weeks. Mr Okafor in lost property wanted to send it to the auction house in Derby, but I said I would look after it until the end of the month, since I was the one who had to sign the ledger. It is heavier than it looks. Inside the glass there is a little silver crescent and a scatter of stars, the sort you'd paint on a nursery ceiling, and when I hold it up to the window the light goes all the way through.

I have been putting it on the ticket counter at night when the platform empties. The signal bell down the line rings twice and then the trains stop, and the hum of the lights is the only sound. Last Thursday I sat with it for an hour and thought about the hands that must have carried it. The cloth had gone grey at the edges where a wrist would rest against it, as if it had been held up for a very long time. I can't tell you why I started crying over a stranger's ornament, except that it looked like something someone had been trying hard to keep steady.

Yesterday a woman in a green coat came to the window, asked for a ball with a moon in it, and described the crack in the base before I'd even opened the cupboard. I didn't say anything about the cuffs. I just watched her hold it, the way she cupped it upright in both palms without thinking, and I signed the form and let her go. Some things should be carried by the people who know how to hold them.

Write soon. Tell Dad the 6.40 is still late.

Love, Bea