Small black fine line tattoo of balance scales on the inner wrist, set against an open printed book and a knitted jumper sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scales of justice on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of balance scales with a central post, a crossbar and two pans sits on the inner wrist. The linework is thin and dark, with light shading inside the pans and along the post. The background shows an open printed book and a beige knitted sleeve, with the skin tones and ink sharply in focus.

Fine line Forearm Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ada Pell had weighed honey in Fenmoor for forty years, and she trusted the brass scales on her counter more than she trusted the men who came to dispute them. On the Tuesday the carter's boy brought back a jar that had come up light, she lifted the pans, tapped the post with one knuckle and said nothing at all. The boy went red to his ears. The whole queue watched him wait.

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Her weights lived in a velvet-lined box under the till, each one stamped with a crown and a number worn soft by thumbs. She had counted them every New Year since her husband died, the way other women counted spoons. Four pounds, two pounds, a little brass ounce shaped like an acorn. Nothing was missing. The trouble was the damp that rose off the forest each autumn and got into everything, including the cord that held the pans true.

Late that evening she took the scales apart on a folded cloth and found a hair-thin crack in the crossbar, the kind a hot summer leaves in brass. She could have sent the boy off with a flea in his ear. Instead she filed the crossbar straight, hung the pans again and weighed a sack of her own flour twice to be sure. Then she chalked on the board in capitals: BALANCE RESTORED. CARTER'S JAR TO BE RE-WEIGHED FREE.

The boy came back the next morning with the jar, scrubbed clean, and a question about whether a shilling weighed the same as a honeycomb. Ada set the coin on one pan, the jar on the other, and let the post settle, level and quiet.