Black and grey fine line tattoo of stacked horizontal and vertical bars on the inner forearm, shown against a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Parallel line motif on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of thin, straight lines arranged in a rectangular block of horizontal and vertical bars, sitting on the inner forearm near the wrist. The lines are crisp and even, with clean solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is black and white, with the arm centred against a plain white background and the person's torso cropped at the right edge.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Line Bar Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry at Hollin Reach had no bell and no lamp, so the crossers learned to read the tally cut into the oak post at the landing. Three upright strokes, a bar laid across them, then a bar beneath. Ysolde Brand, who had kept the boat since her father's knees gave out, said the marks were the days since the last true crossing, and that the number mattered less than who was still standing on the bank to count them.

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Fog came off the estuary most mornings that autumn. Ysolde rowed out with a lantern shaped like a fish, calling names across the water, and brought back whoever answered. A surveyor from the inland towns came in October with a satchel of brass instruments and a grievance. He wanted the crossing closed, the post pulled up, the land sold for a causeway that would never silt. He laughed when she showed him the tally. "Days?" he said. "You're counting nothing."

She didn't argue. She took him out in the grey, and at the middle of the channel she shipped the oars and asked him to call his own name. He did, twice, louder each time, and nothing came back but the slap of water on the hull. "There," she said. "That is what the count is for."

He stayed the winter. In spring he cut one more stroke beside hers, neat and straight, and when she asked what it counted he said it was for the mornings he had answered back, and went down to fetch the oars.