Colour tattoo of an open heart outline with antler-like shapes, pink, teal and tan fills, and lettering reading It's Never Goodbye and Until Next Time, on skin.

Heart tattoo with lettering on an arm

Other · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a large heart outline formed by two curving grey-black lines, with a pink fill at the lower left and teal and tan fills on the right. Lettering runs across the top reading It's Never Goodbye and along the bottom reading Until Next Time, with a date and a short word inside the heart, all in black ink. Black linework and soft colour shading sit against a close crop of skin with a blurred background.

Other Heart Antler Lettering Date Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the snow came early over the Scarrow Col this year, and I have stopped pretending the hut does not feel too big without you. On Sunday the tourists walked up in trainers and I sent them back down with a flask of barley water and a lecture. The old stag we found in September still hangs above the door, its antlers gone the colour of weak tea where the rain gets at them. I think you would have liked the way the light catches the tines.

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The ribbon is still knotted to the cairn at the top of the pass, the teal one you tied the morning you left, and the pink strip beneath it has faded to something like a healing bruise. I walked up on Saturday to check it. The wind had worn the ends to threads, but the knot held, which is more than I can say for the rope we used to haul the goats.

I found your pencil case under the bunk. Inside was the list you wrote for the spring crossing, and folded in the back was the card with the date on it, twelve, nine, fifteen, the night we carried the lantern up in the dark because you said the valley needed a light it could see from the road. You drew that heart on the back of it, two lines that never quite meet. I have been reading it as a promise and as a map.

So I am keeping the lantern lit. When the thaw comes, I will hang the ribbon from the lintel beside the stag and wait for the first walkers to ask what it means. I will tell them it is not goodbye. It is only until next time, and next time I will bring the second flask.