Fine line black infinity symbol with the script words 'and beyond' inside it, tattooed on the side of a ribcage.

Infinity symbol with 'and beyond' on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a fine line tattoo on the side of a torso, showing an infinity symbol with the script words 'and beyond' written inside the loop. The linework is thin and even in solid black ink, with no shading. A hand with black painted nails rests against the skin at the upper right, and the tattoo sits near the centre of the frame against warm, dim lighting.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Infinity symbol Script Word

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, the cobbles are wet from the tide. You asked me about the rope walk, and I will tell it, but sit where I can see your face, because the old ones only tell this story to people who keep an eye on the sea while they listen.

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Sorrel Ashby walked the rope walk at Penhallow every working day for forty years, and she never once made a rope that had an end. Her father taught her to lay the strands so the lay ran round and back on itself, a figure of eight worked flat along the boards, and he said a rope made that way would hold a boat through any gale the Atlantic could send, because it never gave the sea a place to start pulling it apart. Folk laughed. They said the Ashbys were soft in the head, looping hemp when the harbour wanted plain three-strand for the mackerel boats.

Then the winter the Mary Jane went out and did not come back, her skipper's warp was found tied in that figure eight, drawn twice round a bollard on the quay with the tide still tugging at it. Sorrel unwound it herself and carried it up the hill to the chapel. She said nothing about it to anyone. She only hung it over the lintel, looping, and left it there until the salt rotted it through, which took the best part of twenty years.

Writing a thing like that on skin seems a fool's notion to me, but the people who do it understand something I never could. Some things are meant to run on, and beyond.