Two matching forearm tattoos of split hearts filled with pink leopard spots, reading Big Sister and Little Sister in black script.

Matching big and little sister split hearts

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two forearms show a pair of matching tattoos, each a half of a split heart outline in dark linework. The hearts are filled with pink leopard-print spots, and the words Big Sister and Little Sister are written across them in black script. The two arms sit side by side against a dark background, with the hearts aligned so the halves would meet.

Lettering Forearm Heart Leopard print Sister Script Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The leopard-print scarf belongs to Nell, and Nell is not coming back for it. You find it on the hook behind the wheelhouse door of the Ruth Ann, still smelling of diesel and the peppermints she sucked through every trip. Your sister has been gone two weeks, since the Dorothy Mae came in short-handed and she went out in her place. Your father says it is no place for girls. Nell said the same about herself at fourteen and went anyway.

Keep reading

The fleet is rough this autumn. Boats come in with holds half full and skippers with faces like wet slate. You work the quay with your mother, gutting and icing, and every time a hull noses past the breakwater you count the masts. Mr Amos from the chandlery tells you the sea doesn't keep score. He is wrong. Nell kept score in a notebook with a pink cover: every crab, every gale, every day she wrote still here. You find the notebook folded under the scarf.

On the last page she has drawn a heart, split down the middle the way you used to split biscuits when you were small. Her half says BIG. Yours is blank, and beside it she has written your name in pencil, Ruthie, and underneath, keep it till I'm home. So you take the pencil and the notebook down to the slip and sit where the tide reaches your boots.

When the Dorothy Mae turns the point at dusk, you are already on your feet. You can't make out faces yet, only the flash of a pink scarf on a wet deck and a gull wheeling over the wheelhouse. You fold the page so the two halves meet and wait for the hull to come close enough to read the words.