Black and grey realism tattoo of a lace garter with a ribbon bow on the upper thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace garter with bow on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A lace garter band wraps around the thigh, with a shaded ribbon bow at the centre and a long ribbon tail hanging down. The lace panels have fine scalloped edges and heart-shaped motifs with stippled detail. The tattoo uses soft grey shading for depth and highlights, and the image is a close, straight-on crop against a dark background.

Realism Thigh Bow Ribbon Lace Garter Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow came early to Harrow Fold that year, and by Candlemas the ewes were in the low barn and the lane was shut to the road. Mary Dunning had a band of black lace that had been her grandmother's. It had scalloped edges like frost on a window, two hearts worked into the front, and a ribbon bow at the centre with a long tail that reached the knee. Her mother had worn it only to church. Before she died she told Mary to keep it in the drawer with the wool scissors and never to tie it on anything but a gate.

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On the third night of the blizzard a bell began ringing in the wood beyond the top field, slow and steady, the way the dinner bell rang when Mary was small. Her brother Tom had gone out to check the hurdles and had not come back. The voice that called from the lane was their mother's, and it asked Mary to open the gate. Mary did not open it. She took the lace from the drawer, went down to the gatepost, and wound the band round the wood, pulling the bow tight. The tail hung down into the drift.

The thing in the lane stopped at the lace. It began counting the scallops under its breath, one, two, three, the way Mary's mother used to count stitches, and it had to start again each time it lost its place. Mary stood in the snow and counted with it until the bell went quiet.

In the morning Tom came up the wall with a lamb under each arm, following the line of the ribbon as if it were a rope. The bow was still tied. Mary kept the garter on the gate through the thaw, and every winter after she retied it, and the tail was never cut.