Fine black script reading 'After all this time? Always' above and below a line-drawn triangle, circle and vertical line symbol on the inner forearm.

Script quote and triangle symbol on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm shows black script lettering reading 'After all this time?' and 'Always', with a fine-line geometric symbol of a triangle enclosing a circle and a vertical line between them. The linework is thin and even, rendered in solid black ink against a light skin tone. The photo is taken against a dark background, with the tattoo placed centrally and the forearm running diagonally through the frame.

Fine line Lettering Geometric Forearm Script Quote Triangle Circle Symbol Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every Saturday the Lamplighters' Hall at Holm Bridge filled with fiddles, and every Saturday Jonah Crake stood by the door with his cap in his hands, because he had never learned to dance and did not mean to start. The winter the millrace froze, a stranger came in out of the snow with a fiddle case on his back and asked for the caller. He had three things to give, he said, one for each of the questions a man puts to the night.

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The first was a rod of grey ash, worn smooth, which could stop any reel the moment it was wanted. The second was a ring of pale horn that let its wearer see the face of anyone lost, for exactly as long as a tune lasted. The third was a plain length of cord, knotted at both ends, which held fast only when pulled tight between two people who had nothing left to hide from each other. Jonah took the cord because it looked the least, and the stranger laughed at him for choosing it.

On the last night of the frost, Mary Ferrow, the fiddler's daughter, went through the ice at the mill pond and did not come up. Jonah ran down the bank with the cord in his fist. He knotted one end to his wrist, threw the other out across the black water, and called her name until his throat tore. Something took up the slack from below. He hauled, hand over hand, and the cord sang like a bowstring until she came up gasping at the edge of the ice.

The stranger was gone by morning, leaving only an empty fiddle case on the step. Mary wore the cord on her wrist ever after, and Jonah never once asked her to take it off. They danced together every Saturday for fifty years, and when she was old and her hands had gone to knots, she would still ask him, across the floor, after all this time, and he would answer, always.