Black and grey tattoo of a dark shadowy figure with a reaching hand across a shoulder, with a swirl design continuing onto the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shadowy figure tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a tattoo of a dark, shadowy figure with a long reaching hand extending across the shoulder towards the collarbone. The shading is soft and smoky, with heavy black areas and fine grey gradients, and the outline is clear at the edges of the hand. A swirling black design sits on the upper arm, and the skin tone is warm with a shine on the shoulder under the light.

Shoulder Upper arm Figure Hand Shadow Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Thomas, the snow has taken the top of the Hause this week, so I've kept the ewes in the low fold and a lamp lit at the gate, the way you showed me. Don't scold. I know what you'd say about the pass in February.

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It was the dog that found it, or rather the dog that stopped. Meg sat down at the cairn above Bleaberry Tarn and would not come on, staring at the grey smoke that lies on the scree in the mornings. I went up with the crook thinking it was a lost tup. There was no tup. There was a shape standing in the mist with one arm out flat, long fingers reaching across the gap toward me as if it meant to take me by the collar and lead me home.

I did not take the hand. I'm writing that down so you know I had the sense. But I stood a long while, and the thing did not come closer. It only drew its fingers back into the cloud one at a time, the way a man lets go of a rope he has decided not to pull. The smoke behind it turned slowly, like water round a stone. When I got down into the valley the mist had lifted and the hill was bare, and Meg has slept against the door ever since.

Tell Mam I'm eating properly. The reaching thing has not come down to the fold, and I have stopped counting the lambs twice to be sure. Yours, Ruth.