Script quote and profile portrait on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black script quote reads 'Listen with your heart you will understand' across the forearm, with a woman's profile drawn in soft grey shading and pink wash to the right. The linework of the lettering is fine and fluid, while the portrait fades into loose brushed colour with a few pink spots scattered along the arm. The arm sits on a black and white polka dot bedsheet, which fills the background.

Lettering Forearm Portrait Watercolour wash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the damp on that log. Nan Hesketh never told a tale standing up, not since her knees went, and she was not about to start for a pack of village children who had come to the edge of Coldharbour Wood to be frightened.

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There was a miller's girl called Bess Corrigan who went into the birch trees one October evening after her goat, a bad-tempered thing called Pilot. The wood was full of voices that night. Her brother was calling her name from somewhere to the left, and the church bell was ringing from somewhere to the right, and an owl kept asking the same question over and over. Bess stood still among the trunks and remembered what her mother used to say when she was cross and shouting at the hens. Listen with your heart, you will understand. Bess had never understood a word of it.

Then she saw a woman standing at a stile with a grey shawl over her hair. The woman had her face turned to the sky, where the sunset had gone the colour of pink wash spreading through water, and she did not call out. She only lifted one hand and pointed down the north path. Bess followed her, and where the woman's shawl had brushed the ferns, the ground was dusted with petals. At the brook she found Pilot, shivering and furious, and the brother's voice was only a fox making a noise to lure her closer.

She came out on the village green near midnight with the goat under one arm and her stockings torn to ribbons. Petals still clung to her shoulders. When her brother asked where she had been, she said she had been listening. Nan poked the fire and smiled into it. So if you ever find yourselves lost, she said, stop shouting for a moment and look for the quiet one. Now go home before the owls get clever.