Black outline tattoo of a regional map shape with a grey script word inside it, on a person's back.

Outline map tattoo with script word

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline of an irregular land shape, resembling a regional map, sits on the skin. A grey cursive word is written inside the lower left edge of the outline. The linework is even and solid, with the lettering shaded in grey, and the photo is taken straight on against pale skin with some bedding visible at the top.

Back Outline Map Script word Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chart was still damp when Dougie Marr pinned it to the wheelhouse wall, and he never once looked at the coast he had drawn. He looked past the glass at the sea, grey as a gutted herring, and said the outline was right because the fish had told him so. Along the western edge, where the land bent in on itself like a fist, he had written a name in his cramped hand: Morag. Nobody aboard had ever sailed to a Morag, and the mate, Tam Keir, said so every morning over his tea.

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The fleet went out on the Tuesday with four boats and a northerly building behind them. By noon the sky had gone the colour of slate and the other three had lost their lights in the murk. Dougie kept his eyes on the pencil lines. He told us to steer by the bend, to run the coast's shape in our heads, and to listen for surf on the port bow. Tam swore the man had gone soft in the head. Then, out of the spray, came the sound of breakers breaking on rock, and the smell of peat smoke drifting over the water.

We found the harbour mouth exactly where the lettering ran, a narrow cut in the cliffs with a single light burning on the spit. Nobody had a word to say about it. Dougie went below and came back with the chart folded small in his oilskin pocket, the name turned inward. When I asked him what Morag had been, he only shrugged and said some lines are better drawn than explained, and then he went back to watching the water.