Small fine line tattoo of a pug dog held aloft by a galaxy-coloured hot air balloon in pink, purple and blue, placed on the side of the ribs.

Pug floating from a galaxy balloon on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A small pug dog with a pink bow on its head is suspended from a hot air balloon by a thin cord. The dog is drawn in black linework with light grey shading, while the balloon has a galaxy-style fill of blue, purple and pink with small white speckles. The design is centred on a side torso area, with a black bra edge visible at the top of the frame.

Fine line Ribs Pug Dog Hot air balloon Galaxy Bow Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The balloon man came to Tolling Cross on the last Saturday in August, 1956, and tied his bunch of galaxy balloons to the railings outside the Co-op. Nobody in the village had seen a sky like that before: blue going to violet, pink at the seams, and tiny white flecks as if someone had flicked a brush over it. Edna Varley, who kept the post office, paid a penny for one. Her pug, Biscuit, wanted none of it. He barked at the bobbing thing until the boy from the farm, who was minding the string, bent down to scratch his ears and let go.

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Biscuit went up with the balloon still tied to his collar, his pink bow bobbing like a lure. People stood in the square with their heads tipped back. The balloon drifted over the mill, over the chapel spire, and out across the moor where the peat smoke lies low. Edna ran until her shoes came off. The men said the dog would come down by Thursday. The women said nothing and put the kettle on.

Thursday came and went. On Friday the boy from the farm walked up to Hob's Tor and swore he saw a pale shape turning slowly against the dusk, like something that had forgotten the way down. Nobody believed him until the milk cart driver found a line of small grey paw prints pressed into the frost on the chapel wall, climbing toward the gutter.

Edna never got him back. But on still August nights the children of Tolling Cross swear a pink bow passes over the churchyard, slow as a thought, and Edna leaves her back door open a crack with a saucer of milk on the step, in case he wants to come down.