Black and grey shaded trident tattoo on the upper back near the base of the neck, shown in a black and white photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shaded trident tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large trident with a central shaft, barbed prongs and a pointed tip is shown in black and grey. The outlined form is filled with graduated shading that gives the metal a rounded, dimensional look, with a banded collar near the top of the shaft. The design is centred on the upper back and fills most of the frame against the skin.

Back Trident Spear Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The forge on Skerray had been cold since my uncle's hands gave out, so when the weather turned it was me who lit it. Nobody else on the island could draw a bar of iron to a point without it cracking, and nobody else would climb the cliff path to ask the old man for his tools.

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Uncle Tam kept his tongs wrapped in sailcloth on a nail by the door. He would not let me touch them until my fourth winter, and then only to work the bellows while he cursed the coal. The job that year was a trident for the lifeboat men, to spear the conger that had been tearing the creel lines. Tam drew out three prongs, each barbed back like a heron's leg, and banded the shaft twice near the top so the grip would hold with wet hands. I asked why three when two would do for a fish. He said two was for a fisherman. Three was for the sea, which had never once been polite.

When it was finished he made me file the prongs by lamplight, long strokes, until the grey came up under the black scale. He told me to shade the iron the way water is shaded at dusk, dark where it runs deep and pale where the light still catches. I thought he was being soft about it. Then the lifeboat men came up the path in the rain, the conger was already hanging from the slipway, and they took the spear from my hands without a word.

Tam died in the spring. The trident stayed on its nail beside the sailcloth, and I still lit the forge each morning, because the sea keeps asking for things and a point wants keeping sharp. I never told the men that the conger had already tangled itself in its own line, long before they reached it.