Black and teal tattoo on an upper arm showing pine tree silhouettes, distant hills and two large snowflakes, with the shoulder visible at the top of the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pine forest and snowflakes on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a row of tall pine tree silhouettes rising above soft teal and blue hills, with a faint circle outlined behind them. Two large white snowflakes sit in the lower half, set against dark, heavily shaded trees and a few fine dotted lines. Black shading is dense around the trees and fades into soft washes of colour in the distant landscape, and the image is cropped close to the shoulder and upper arm.

Upper arm Shoulder Pine tree Snowflake Forest Hill Landscape Circle Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow started before the ferry cleared the breakwater, and you stood at the stern with your hands jammed in your coat because Mags had said the cold off the Sound would take the skin from your knuckles if you kept them bare. Behind you Harbour Street was going dark lamp by lamp, the council having decided in October that the timers were a luxury. Nobody on board was talking. The engine did the talking, a low grumble that rattled the rail under your palms.

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Up on the headland the pines stood in a single black file along the ridge, each one thin as a pencil stroke against the hills, which had gone the colour of wet slate and then, as the light slid off them, the faint teal of sea ice. Your grandfather planted the first row the spring the herring boats stopped coming in. He used to say that if you counted the trees from the pier you would know whether the boats could go out, and if you counted wrong you would be the one to tell the widows. You never once counted right. You never once stopped trying.

Halfway across, the flakes grew heavy and fell like cut paper, each one landing on the deck and staying there, perfect and temporary. You had folded a dozen of them at the kitchen table the night before, snipping until your eyes ached, and left them in the wheelhouse for the skipper's girl to find. Now you watched the first one melt on the rail beside your hand.

The ferry rounded the point. The pines slid behind the headland one by one, until only the top of the last tree showed, a single dark stroke against the white. You pressed your palm flat on the wet steel and held it there until the cold burned, then you let go and went inside to find the kettle, leaving a clean print on the rail that the snow was already filling in.