Small black Roman numeral tattoo sitting behind an ear in a side-on photo, set in a simple lettering style.

Roman numerals behind the ear

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A side profile of an ear with a small tattoo of Roman numerals placed behind it, running vertically along the hairline. The characters are drawn in clean black linework with a serif-like lettering style and no shading. The photo is warm-toned and softly focused, with the ear and tattoo at the centre and the hair blurred in the background.

Lettering Other Roman numeral Numeral Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bell at Corran Hollow had been cracked since the winter the river froze, so when old Tobin Vell lost his voice to the damp, the ringing passed to his granddaughter Irla. Each dusk she climbed the tower's ninety-seven steps with a wooden mallet under one arm and a cold lamp in her fist, and each dusk she counted them out loud so the wind could not steal the number.

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The masons had cut the stairs in the old way, every step numbered in Roman figures on the risers, because King Ansel the Thrifty believed that a thing counted was a thing kept. At the top, above the iron door, the last numeral was carved deepest of all. Irla had asked her grandfather once why the tower needed ninety-seven steps when seventy would have reached the bell. He only said that the number was for the boats, and went back to his soup.

In the autumn of the fog, eleven fishing boats were still out past the mussel beds when the light went. Irla struck the cracked bell ninety-seven times without stopping, her arms burning, until the sound had gone so thin it was little more than a shiver on the water. One by one the lanterns came back along the shore, bobbing out of the grey like loose stars.

Afterwards she sat on the top step with the mallet across her knees and understood the count had never been for the bell. It was so that someone, somewhere, would always be able to say exactly how far home was.