Colour tattoo of an ornate hot air balloon with the word Freedom in black script below it, on the outer thigh.

Hot air balloon and Freedom script on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A patterned hot air balloon in blues and teal, with ornamental bands across the envelope and a small basket, hangs from a thin tether line that trails into the word Freedom in black script. The balloon has a dark outline and detailed fill, while the lettering uses a fine, continuous line. The tattoo sits on a bare thigh against a softly blurred background with a warm, slightly faded tone.

Lettering Thigh Hot air balloon Balloon Freedom Script Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The balloon came down in the frost field the morning after the thaw, snagged on the top wire fence with its basket tipped on its side and its painted envelope still faintly warm. Old Hobb Crane walked out with the milk pails and stood looking at it for a long time before he set the pails down. The bands round the envelope were blue and teal, stitched with little ornaments like the lace on a Sunday collar, and the tether line ran from the basket to a loop of cord that was knotted round a bent card. On the card, in black ink, somebody had written one word: Freedom.

Keep reading

His granddaughter Ada came up the hill with the dog at her heels and read the card twice, moving her lips. The farm had been shut in by snow for six weeks. The ewes were heavy, the hens had stopped laying, and the road to the market had been a sheet of ice since Christmas. She said the balloon must have come from the town over the far ridge, where the travelling fair had gone under canvas in autumn and never packed up. Hobb said that was no reason to keep it.

They did not keep it. Through the short afternoon Ada worked at the knot with cold fingers, and when the light went orange over the hedge she cut the cord. The balloon lifted slowly, the basket swinging, the painted bands catching the last of the sun. It did not go far before the wind took it over the bare elms, and the tether line trailed behind it like a loose thread.

That spring Ada found the card in the dresser drawer, still folded in the cord's old twist. She kept it there with the lambing book and never once took it out to read it again.