Nana script with arrow on ribs
Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo
A black ink tattoo of the word Nana in flowing script, with a thin arrow running beneath it, its head at the lower left and feathered fletching at the right. The linework is fine and even, with light shading and no colour. The phone photo shows the tattoo on the side of the ribs, partly framed by a yellow lace top and a teal vest in warm indoor light.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The big top has three patches of daylight showing through its roof, and Nana is already halfway up the rope ladder with her bow slung across her back before the lamps are lit. Nobody has told the crowd that the Marvello Brothers are finished after Bristol. You stand in the sawdust with an apple balanced on your little brother's head, because he is seven and would rather die than cry in front of Mr Oakes, and you keep your hands perfectly still.
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She shoots from the top of the ladder with arrows she fletched herself from the tail feathers of a peacock that died the winter the lorry broke its axle outside Leeds. The tent goes silent the way it never does for the trapeze. The first arrow takes the apple clean. The second splits the first, and the third pins the safety net so it hums like a plucked string. Mr Oakes stops counting the empty benches and simply stares.
That night, with the caravan rocking on its springs, she sits at the little table and sharpens the arrowheads one by one, as if the show might return if she is tidy enough. You ask her why she never aims at anything that could bleed. She says it is the aim that matters, not the target, and then she presses a single black feather into your palm, its quill still warm from her thumb, and tells you to keep it until the lorry stops moving.
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