Black ink tattoo on a forearm showing a shaded pine cone above a pair of pine needles and the lowercase word nu, in a botanical fine line style.

Pine cone and needles with the word nu on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded pine cone sits above a pair of crossed pine needles, with the lowercase word nu in small serif lettering beneath them. The cone is rendered with dark solid shading and light stippled highlights, while the needles and lettering use thin, even outlines. The design is centred on a pale forearm against a near-black background, all in black ink.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Demetrios, the ship you sent for the pitch barrels has come and gone without you, so I am writing to the harbour office at Pydna, and the clerk has promised to hand this to the next boat south. The cone in this letter fell from the big Aleppo pine above the spring yesterday, while the goats were being driven down past it. I picked it up before the dog could take it, and I have been turning it over ever since, counting the scales the way my mother counted stitches.

Keep reading

The old men at the threshing floor say the trees will not bear again until the rains come back over Olympus, and that a cone which drops in summer is a bad omen. I told them the omen was mine to read, not theirs. Two needles came away with it, crossed like the strokes of the letter you taught me, the one you wrote as a hook and called nu. You said it stood for nothing at all, only a sound. I think you were wrong about that, but I will not argue it with you by letter.

Write back soon, though I know what you will say: come home, the wine is ready and the roof leaks in the east room. I will come, nun, now, as soon as the boat sails. Keep the cone on the shelf until then. When you see the needles, remember that I counted every one.

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