Photograph of a pastel blue and pink watercolour-style tattoo with thin black linework forming a ridge, on the lower back of a person with wavy hair.

Pastel wash ridge tattoo on lower back

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A person seen from behind wears a teal top, with long wavy hair falling over the upper back. Below the waistband, a tattoo on the lower back shows a ridge-like outline in fine black linework, filled with soft blue and pink washes that fade at the edges. The image is a close, evenly lit shot against a dark background, with the tattoo at the bottom right of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The ridge has been behaving badly since Tuesday. Every morning I take the theodolite up the goat track past Hallam's sheepfold, and every morning the cloud sits on the Gray Man's shoulder like a wet dog that won't be moved, so I sit and wait. Mr Penhallow at the survey office wants the sheet finished by Lady Day. He does not care that the mountain keeps changing its mind.

Yesterday the cloud lifted all at once, and I saw what you asked me to look for. The ridge is not grey at that hour. Where the sun catches the scree it turns the blue of your mother's delft, the snow lying in the gullies goes faintly rose, and the cloud banks drifting off the crest are washed with violet where they thin. I sat on a rock with my pencil stopped mid-line and forgot to take a single bearing.

I have drawn the outline four times now, and each time the shadows come out too hard, the way a surveyor draws everything. So I am sending the ridge to you instead, in pencil on the back of the last pay slip. Keep it flat in your book so the lines don't smudge. They are finer than they look.

When you come up in June, bring the good paints. We will go together at dawn, and you can tell me where the sky ends and the mountain begins, because I can no longer find the join. Your loving brother, Tom.

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