Black and grey mandala tattoo on a forearm and an ornamental floral sleeve on the other arm, with small finger tattoos, resting on white bedsheets.

Mandala and floral sleeve on forearm and hand

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms rest on crumpled white bedsheets, one with a dense floral and ornamental sleeve that reaches down to the hand and the other with a dotwork mandala on the wrist and forearm. The linework is fine and the shading is soft, with greys and black ink. Small dots and simple symbols are tattooed across the fingers, and the warm skin tones contrast with the cool bedding.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The rain got into the big top again last night, so we spent until two laying the canvas out on the grass with the lamps off, hunting for holes with a torch between our teeth. Mrs Adair wants to know why the ring boys were smoking under the tent flap. I told her they had nothing better to do, which she did not appreciate.

The real news is Ada from the coconut shy. She has been drawing again, sitting on the back step of her caravan with a compass and a pot of ink, pricking tiny dots around the edge of a paper circle until it looks like frost on a windowpane. She calls it a mandala. She learned the pattern from a man in Leeds who stitched them onto cushions, and she says each dot costs her an hour. She only ever finishes one a season, because the fair moves on before the petals can close.

Last Thursday the wind took her latest sheet over the hedge. I chased it across a field of sheep and found it snagged on barbed wire, every dot still whole. I carried it back folded inside my apron. She didn't thank me. She unfolded it on her bed, smoothed it flat with both palms, and said, "Now I can leave it." Then she unpicked the lining of the old travelling trunk and sewed the paper in beneath the lid.

We leave for Carlisle on Monday, and she has asked me to mind the trunk. Write back soon, and tell Father the goldfish is not dead. It is only sulking.

Love, Nell

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