Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a patterned hot air balloon on the outer thigh, with the word freedom in black script hanging from its basket.

Hot air balloon with freedom script on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A hot air balloon with a teal, peach and pink ornamental pattern fills the upper part of the design, with scalloped bands and dotted lines across its envelope. Its basket and cords are outlined in black, and a black script word reading freedom trails from the basket down and to the right. The bold colour sits on a plain skin backdrop with a blurred green background at the edge of the frame.

Neo-trad Lettering Thigh Hot air balloon Script Freedom

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Tuesday the fair came to the common, Maren Okafor-Hale stood by the tethered balloon with a cup of tea going cold in her hand and watched the ropeman check every knot twice. He was a thin man with a cigarette behind one ear and he talked to the envelope the way other men talked to horses. Nobody had asked her to help. She had simply come, because her brother had built the burner frame in their dad's garage and had never once been allowed to see it fly.

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The patterns on the silk had been painted by hand over three winters, scallops of peach and teal, a dotted line running round the belly like stitching on a good coat. Her brother had wanted it plain. Their mum had insisted on the lace. Now the lace was catching the floodlights and throwing little moons across the grass, and the basket was rocking gently against its ropes like something impatient to be let off a lead.

At half past nine the ropeman lit the burner and the whole thing swelled upright with a roar that made the crowd laugh and step back. Maren's brother climbed in without looking at her. She saw his hand go to the rim and stay there. Then the cords went slack, the ground let go with a small clean sigh, and the basket rose past the tent tops into a sky full of nothing but stars and the thin green line of the motorway.

She kept the cup in both hands until the balloon was a dark bloom above the ring road, then she tipped the cold tea into the grass and walked home without it.