Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a hawk perched on an inverted triangle with dotted lines, on the inner forearm.

Hawk perched on a triangle on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed hawk stands in profile on a horizontal bar above an inverted triangle outlined in solid black, with dotted lines running through its centre. The bird's feathers and head are built up with fine stippled dots and soft shading, giving it a textured, sculpted look. The black and grey palette is set against bare skin on the forearm, with a plain dark top and a brick wall in the background.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Bird Triangle Dotted line Geometric shape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, the lot of you, and keep your hands off the dog. You've all heard how Ashvale was measured out in threes: three rivers, three roads, three bells in the chapel tower. Fewer of you know about the hawk, because the hawk was never anybody's favourite, and that is why it lasted longest.

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The king, Aldric the Exact, kept a grey hawk named Plumb on a bronze bar above the door of the Weighing House. Beneath the bar hung a triangle of black iron, point down, and every tax-cart in the realm passed under it. Dotted seams ran through the iron where the founders had marked the thirds of the land, and clerks traced them with their thumbs for luck. Plumb watched the carts with the patience of a bird that has already decided about the mice.

One autumn the steward, a soft man called Mordaunt Pell, grew tired of the hawk's stillness and begged the king to loose it over the marshes, where the farmers had gathered against the new levy. The falconer, a girl named Iseult Varrow, slipped the jesses. Plumb rose, circled once over the bar, and then did not go to the marsh. It flew straight down the dotted seam toward the river mouth, the one line nobody had ever walked, and where its shadow crossed the water the farmers found a ford they had been told did not exist.

By morning the three roads were two, the steward had gone to the coast, and Aldric had the bar repainted without a bird on it. Iseult kept the iron triangle, though. Each year, when the bell rang for the new thirds, she climbed to the Weighing House, touched the small dot at the centre of the iron, and left the door open a crack for the draught.