Small black fine line tattoo of triangle and Roman numerals VII and VIII on the inner forearm near the wrist, with beaded bracelets above.

Roman numerals VII and VIII on inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black tattoo on the inner forearm, showing a triangle followed by the Roman numeral VII, then a solid triangle, then the numeral VIII. The linework is crisp and solid with no shading, and the ink is black. The arm rests on a jeans-covered lap in front of a wooden floor, with red and black beaded bracelets and a patterned bangle worn above the tattoo.

Fine line Forearm Roman numeral Triangle Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Put another log on, Dilys, the cold's come up off the mud again. No, not that one, it's wet. Right, where was I? Ah, the markers. You'll have seen the stones along the causeway, the ones with a little black point cut into them, pointing up the road like a dog's ears. Every one of them a waymark, and every waymark numbered in the old figures the clockmakers used before the water took the clocks.

Keep reading

Old Tamsin Cray walked that causeway with a sack of seed on her back every spring for forty years and never once missed the turn. Folk asked her how, and she'd say a triangle means look up, a solid triangle means step careful, and the numbers tell you how many paces to the next dry stone. Seven paces from the first point, then eight from the solid one. That was all the map she carried, and it was enough to keep a whole valley fed.

The year the flood came over the eighth stone, Tamsin was the only one who knew the road was still there under it. She waded out with a rope between her teeth and a boy called Ansel behind her, counting aloud because he'd been told to count and not to look at the water. Seven, then the black point, then eight. They reached the far bank as the light went. Ansel swore for years that the stones had been warm under his feet. Tamsin said that was only the sun they'd soaked up all day, and kept her own counsel about the rest.

Now then, bed, the lot of you. And count your steps on the way, because the road doesn't care whether you're looking.