Black linework tattoo of a crowned, robed religious figure with scrolled sides and a small cross below, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Robed religious figure outline on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line outline of a crowned, robed religious figure with a dotted line running down the centre of the robe and a small solid cross beneath it. The linework is black and even, with scrolled curves on either side of the robe. The tattoo sits on a bare forearm against a dark background, with the design centred vertically.

Fine line Forearm Crown Cross Scroll Dotted line Robe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are eleven the summer the net comes up heavy at the bend below the weir. Your uncle swears it is a drowned sack of sand until he tips it onto the planks and the thing inside looks up at you with a crown on its head. It is no bigger than your hand. Its robe has gone the colour of wet slate, and someone has scratched a line of small dots down the front of it, as if to count the buttons.

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Nobody in Pedra Verde wants it in the house. The priest says it belongs in the church, the schoolmistress says it belongs in a museum in the city, and your mother says nothing at all. She wraps it in a flour sack and puts it on the top shelf above the stove, where the heat will dry the river out of it. Every evening you climb the stool to check it has not slid back into the water, though you would never admit that was why.

In August the rains stop, the weir sinks, and the men go out with rakes to find the old bridge pier. Your uncle does not come home for supper. You sit on the stool with the figure in your palm and count the dots down its robe, one after another, until you reach the bottom. There is a small solid cross there that you have never noticed before, because the light in the kitchen was never right for seeing it.

At first light you walk it down to the bend and set it on the flat stone where the water runs shallow. The river is low enough now to show the old pier, black and broken, with your uncle sitting on it, rake across his knees, his boots in the mud. He lifts one hand. You lift yours back, and you leave the figure where the current can find it.