Black and grey tattoo of mountains, pine trees and a sun inside an arrowhead shape on a forearm, with part of a heart tattoo above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mountains and sun inside an arrowhead

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pale forearm shows a tattoo of a mountain peak and pine trees set inside a large arrowhead outline, with a pale sun rising behind the peak. The arrowhead's upper section uses fine horizontal hatching, while the mountains and trees are built from stippled dots and engraved-style lines. Part of a shaded heart tattoo sits above, and a small crossed mark appears to the left, all in black and grey ink.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Mountain Sun Pine tree Arrowhead Heart Forest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sun is still behind the ridge when the mule stops dead on the scree, and you crouch beside it to ease the pack straps. Your thumb finds something sharp among the grey stones. It is an arrowhead, leaf-shaped, its edges chipped so finely they look ruled. Someone sat on this slope before the road was cut and knapped a point from the rock, then lost it or left it, and the mountain kept it for you.

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Your brother's letter is folded inside your coat. He writes that the valley has gone to sheep and pine, that the chapel bell was sold for scrap, and that you should come home before the snow shuts the Hallen col. You take a stub of pencil from your pocket and trace the arrowhead's outline onto the back of the letter, the way your grandmother taught you to measure a hillside before you trusted it.

By the time the outline is done, first light has reached the peak across the cwm, and the sun slides up into the notch of the arrowhead's shoulders as if someone had set it there on purpose. Below, the pines are dark stitches on the slope. You count them, lose count, and start again. The mule lies down in the scree with a groan like surrender, and you do not push it. You sit with your back to the rock and fill in the peak and trees, and the hatching for the sky comes out of the pencil without your asking.

The snow comes in mid-afternoon, soft and sideways. You are still there, the letter in your pocket with a drawing on its back. The valley can wait one more night, you decide, and the arrowhead points down the pass the way you were always going to go. You close your hand around the flint until it is warm, and you keep it.