Black outline of a five-pointed star tattooed on a forearm, partly covered by clear plastic aftercare film over reddened skin.

Outlined star on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single five-pointed star is drawn in a bold black outline on the inner forearm. The skin around it looks red and raw, and clear plastic wrap covers much of the area, so the tattoo may be fresh. The black ink is set against a blurred, dark background with a light focus on the arm.

Geometric Forearm Star Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The film was Mrs Abernethy's idea, not mine. She pressed it down over the star at the harbour office with the same thumb she uses to test bread, and told me the air would sulk at it otherwise. I said stars had never sulked in their lives. She said that was because nobody had ever bothered to ask them. Out the window the ferry was loading crates of salt cod, and the gulls were squabbling over a dropped pasty as though it owed them money.

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Dougie Frew did the outline on Tuesday, after closing, under the bare bulb in the back of the net loft. He had no proper machine, only a set his brother brought back from Aberdeen in a tobacco tin, and he worked slowly, stopping every few points to wipe the ink away with a cloth that smelled of paraffin. The star took him most of an hour. I counted the points while he went, five of them, the way my father used to count the boats in before weather, one for each man he expected home and one for each he did not.

Nobody on Inchmarrow asked why I would want a star on my arm. They knew the answer anyway. The mainland is a line of lights you can see from the cliffs on clear nights, and every star on the island seems to lean towards it. My mother told me that when I was small, and I did not believe her until I began measuring the angle with my own eye from the top of the harbour wall, the way she taught me to take a bearing.

Tomorrow the film comes off and the skin will be tight and pink and new. Mrs Abernethy says I must keep the wrap on for three days so the ink can settle. I have told her I will try. The ferry horn sounded from the pier, long and low, and I rested my arm on the sill and let the star face the lights.