Matching fine line black swirl symbol tattoos on the top of both feet, with dark red and pale pink toenail polish against grey carpet.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching swirl symbols on two feet

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

Two bare feet are shown from above, each with a small black tattoo of an interlinked swirl motif on the top of the foot. The linework is thin and even, with curled ends and a solid black ink fill. The image is in black and grey, and the composition is centred on the feet with jeans cuffed at the ankles and grey carpet behind.

Fine line Other Swirl Symbol Knot Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mairead had counted the stairs every night for eleven years, one hundred and ninety-six of them winding up the inside of Carrick Skerry light, and she still lost her place when the wind came in from the east and the lamp glass hummed. Tonight she reached a hundred and forty and stopped, because her brother Tam was sitting on the ninth landing with his boots off and a tin of mutton fat between his knees.

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"You're late," he said. "The relief boat went round the point without us."

"Then it's you and me till Thursday." She sat beside him. Above them the brass plate by the lamp room door still held two swirls punched into the metal by some keeper long dead, the curled ends worn smooth by a century of rags. Tam had always said the mark was for luck. Mairead thought it was for keeping count, the way the treads had been scored in twos and threes so a man climbing in the dark could tell where he was.

"Dad scratched that into the first step the year you were born," she said. "Mam said you'd never sit still long enough to be counted."

"I sat still tonight." Outside, the sea heaved against the skerry and fell back, and the beam swept across the water and found nothing but spray. Mairead took the rag from him, worked at the second swirl until the brass shone like a coin, and said, "There. Now we both know where we are."