Black and grey fine line tattoo of an outlined heart with swirling filigree and a ribbon looping through it, on the inner wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart and ribbon on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of an outlined heart on the inner wrist, with a ribbon wrapping through it. The heart is filled with delicate swirling scrollwork. The linework is thin and even, and the tattoo is shown in soft, natural light against a plain background.

Fine line Forearm Heart Ribbon Swirl Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats had been out since before light, and Maud Penhallow stood on the quay with a coil of tarred twine over her arm, counting sails against the grey. Eleven had gone out. Ten had come back on the turn of the tide, which was the way of it in Porthscald, and the eleventh was the Gull Hester, whose skipper had promised to bring her in on the evening water.

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Her grandmother had told her what to do in such a case. Take a length of ribbon, the blue of the sky you most want to see again, and thread it through a heart cut from something that has held its shape in salt. Leave it on the harbour wall with the curls turned to the sea, so the swirls of the water would know which way home lay. Maud had always thought it foolishness, but her hands had already found the scissors.

She had no tin, so she used the lead from a spent net weight, beating it flat on the stone with a mallet until it bent into a rough heart. She scratched scrollwork into it with a nail, curls like the foam that breaks on the Nab rocks, then pushed the ribbon through the top and let the tail trail out over the edge of the wall.

The Gull Hester came in on the last of the light, low in the water and heavy with fish, her skipper lifting one hand from the bow. Maud did not untie the ribbon. By morning the tide had taken it, and the lead heart sat alone on the wall, its curls catching the first sun. Nobody in the village ever asked her why she had made it, and she never said.