Two small colour bow tattoos on the fingers of two hands, a red bow on the left finger and a pink bow on the right, against a black polka dot background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red and pink bow tattoos on two fingers

Hand · Colour · Photo

Two hands are held together, each with a small bow tattoo on one finger. The left bow is solid red with a black outline, and the right bow is pale pink with a red centre and black linework. The black and white polka dot fabric behind the hands gives the composition a high-contrast backdrop.

Hand Bow Ribbon Finger Hand Polka dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the market town of Harrowmere, the ribbon seller Orla Penhallow kept two spools on her stall, one red as a robin's breast and one pale as the inside of a shell. Her cousin Tamsin sold thread two stalls down, and the pair had quarrelled since they were girls over which of them had the finer hand with a bow.

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When the miller's son Edwin set his wedding for Michaelmas, the bride's mother asked for ribbon to bind the churchyard gate. Orla cut the red and Tamsin cut the pink, and neither would let the other tie the first knot. In the end they tied it together, one bow each side of the gate, their fingers crossed over the loops so that neither could pull free without the other.

The old women said a knot made by two hands could not be undone by one, and so it proved. On the wedding morning the bells rang, the bride's aunt came up the lane in a black skirt she had sewn with white spots for luck, and the two cousins walked behind her holding hands. The wind came off the moor, but both bows held.

Afterwards Tamsin pricked a pink bow onto Orla's finger with a needle and soot, and Orla returned the favour with red. Neither spool was ever sold that year. People in Harrowmere still say the cousins were the only pair in the town who could argue about ribbon all day and never once let go.