Black and grey tattoo on the inner upper arm of a faceless, hooded spirit with three soot sprites below it, in a shaded illustrative style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Masked spirit and soot sprites on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A tall, hooded figure with a blank white mask and small dark eyes stands on the inner upper arm, with its arms partly visible at the sides. Three round, black soot sprites with spiky outlines sit in the lower part of the design, with small scattered dots around them. The tattoo uses soft grey shading for the robe and bold black for the sprites, set against the skin of the arm with a dark sleeve at the top left.

Upper arm Soot sprite Hooded figure Mask

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mair,

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The rain has not stopped since Tuesday, and the brothers have started calling the new guest the Grey Visitor, though none of us has heard it speak. It came up the lane in the wet, a tall figure in a long grey robe with a blank white mask, and stood at the gate until Brother Piers opened it. The Abbot says we should not ask where it has come from. I have stopped asking anything, since the answers are always more trouble than the questions.

The sprites are the real trouble. Little black soot-balls with spiky edges, dozens of them, came out of the old kitchen chimney the week the rain began. Brother Tomas swept at them with a birch broom and they simply rolled back under the stove, chattering like wet sparrows. Now they fill the coal bins and the cracks between the flagstones, and every morning the bread comes out of the oven smelling faintly of smoke.

Last night the Visitor came into the refectory and sat at the end of the long bench. Piers set a heel of bread in front of it. It did not eat. Instead it held the bread out, very slowly, to the sprites that had gathered on the floor, and they climbed over its sleeve to take it. When they had eaten they grew heavy and rolled, one by one, into the cold oven mouth, and the Visitor's mask never once moved to watch them go.

This morning I found the sprites lined up along the chapel step, and the Visitor gone. On the threshold there was a single smudge of soot shaped like an open hand. I have left the kitchen door unbarred. I think it only wanted someone to ask it to sit down.

Write soon, Anselm