Black and grey realism tattoo of a pine forest fading up the inner forearm, with a wristwatch and red checked shirt in view.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pine forest tattoo on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm carries a tattoo of a pine forest, with conifers rising from the lower arm towards the elbow. The trees are rendered in fine, soft shading with dense, layered needles and pale highlights that suggest depth and mist. The image is a close, slightly warm-toned photo, and the ink is entirely black and grey.

Realism Forearm Pine tree Forest Tree Conifer Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mist came off the Sound before the ferry did, the way it always does on Harrow Isle in March, and by nine the pines on Cnoc Dubh had shrunk to their lowest branches. My grandfather planted those trees the year the herring boats stopped coming in, a hundred and forty rows of Scots pine marching up the hill like men who had been told to wait. I was ten when he gave me the job of counting them. I got to four hundred and twelve before I lost my place in the grey and started again.

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Nobody on the island asks me much now. I keep the chandlery on the quay and I know which boats are overdue by the sound of their engines. In October the ferry was late three days running, and the postmaster sent word that the mainland had forgotten us. I went up the hill instead, past the last fence and into the trees, where the needles lie so thick the ground gives under you like a mattress. The light in there is green and silver and never quite arrives.

At the top, where the planting stops, my grandfather had left a tin box under a flat stone with a chart folded inside it. Every row was marked with a name, and beside most of them a small cross in red pencil. Some crosses were for men who never came home from the sea. Some, I understood, were for trees that never took. Under the last row, in his square capitals, he had written: COUNT THE ONES STILL STANDING.

I sat on the stone and counted until the mist thinned to a pale line over the water. Then I walked down to the quay, where the ferry was finally nosing through the gap with its lamps lit, and I put the kettle on for the crew before they had even tied up.