Black and grey blackwork and dotwork tattoo of a pine tree silhouette on a forearm, fading into fine stippling towards the wrist.

Pine tree forest silhouette on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A two-panel black and white photograph of a forearm and wrist with a tattoo of a dense pine tree line in solid black ink. Below the trees, the design fades into fine stippled dots that thin out towards the wrist, creating a gradient. The image is shot from the back of the arm, with a gloved hand holding the wrist and the background showing a wooden floor.

Blackwork Dotwork Forearm Pine tree Forest Tree Silhouette Stippling Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The chart came back from Inverary with the coastline done in hard ink, every rock and jetty where Mr Aske left it, but the pines on the far shore are a different matter. Above the Kyle they stand as a solid black line, close as the bristles on a brush, and below them the wood runs out into dots. He stippled the lower slopes one by one with a crow quill because, he said, the trees you cannot see are still there, only thinner. I thought he was being precious. Now I am not so sure.

Yesterday the ferryman, old Calum Reid, rowed me across to check the bearings. We walked up through the trunks to where the needles give way to bracken and the specks of light come through the branches like someone picking out grain on a page. He stopped at the edge and would not go further. He said his father had gone in there with a dog and a lantern in the winter of the big snow and come out again with the dog only. Calum did not say the rest of it and I did not ask.

I have pinned the chart above the stove so the damp can get at it. The lower wood is fading a little more each week, the ink lifting off the paper where the sea air creeps under the window. Mr Aske would have been furious. I find I do not mind. Better to let the edge go soft than to draw a line where no one has been.

Come home at Michaelmas, and bring the good compass. I will meet the boat myself.

Your loving sister, Ellen