Colour tattoo of an open book with black outline and watercolour splashes in pink, yellow, teal and orange on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Open book with watercolour splashes

Forearm · Colour · Photo

An open book with fanned pages and visible page edges is drawn in a black outline. Soft watercolour-style washes of pink, orange, yellow, green and teal spread behind and across the book, with splatter drops around it. The design is centred on the skin and the colour is bright and layered over the book's pages.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The west tower finally gave up its books this week, or what the damp had left of them. Mr Pryce and I carried the last crate down the spiral stair on Tuesday, and the lads from the village stood about as if we were bringing out bodies. Most of it is pulp. But the bottom shelf held a folio of wash drawings belonging to the old Lady Ashcombe, and the pages have taken on the colours of whatever rain came through the broken lead above them.

I spent the afternoon with a fine brush and a bowl of cold water, lifting one leaf at a time. Pink from the sunset that came through the window in March. Yellow where a jar of mustard seed was kept. Teal where her paint had run down the wall in a long, slow tongue. None of it was meant to be there, and I found I didn't want to clean it off.

By evening I had a sheaf of pages spread across the refectory table, drying in the draught. Pryce came in with his lamp and stood looking at them for a long time. He said the countess would have hated them, then said she would have been furious to find them so beautiful, and then he went out without another word.

I am keeping the folio. Not for the library, which has no roof worth speaking of, but for the open pages, which I have decided to leave open. Come up at Easter and you can read them with me. Mind the third step from the top; it has been waiting for someone to fall.

Yours, Harriet

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