Black and grey tattoo of an outlined heart with an ornate mandala-style border on the upper arm, below a pink knit sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala heart on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid outlined heart sits at the centre of the design, surrounded by a dense mandala-style border of scalloped petals and dotted ornament. The linework is crisp and dark, with the interior of the heart left as unshaded skin. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against a pale arm and a pink knitted sleeve, with the design filling most of the frame.

Blackwork Upper arm Heart Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lattice-maker of Hollin Reach was asked for a gate that would keep out the wind but let the light through, and she spent the whole winter cutting it from grey iron. Her neighbours brought her bread and asked when it would be finished. She said it was finished when the petals were all in place, and they laughed, because the petals were already there, ring upon ring of them, scalloped and dotted like frost on a cold pane.

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What she would not do was close the middle. Every smith who came up the track to look at the gate said the same thing: fill the hollow, or the wind will get in. She only shook her head and went back to her anvil. The hollow was the shape of a heart, and she would not say who it was for, though the old women of the reach guessed it was for her brother, who had gone down to the salt cities and never sent word.

In the dark month a stranger came up the track carrying a lantern in a pink wool wrap. The stranger stood at the gate for a long time and then asked, quietly, whether the centre was meant to be left open. The lattice-maker said yes. The stranger set the lantern down inside the hollow, and the light went out through the petals in a thousand small rounds across the snow.

The reach still calls it the heart gate. Each dusk someone lights a lamp and sets it in the middle, so that anyone walking home from the far road can see the way up.