A fine black single-line tattoo running vertically along the raised forearm of a person with silver-white hair against a plain white background.

Single black line tattoo on a raised forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person with silver-white hair, shown from behind with their face hidden, raises one arm straight up. A single thin black vertical line runs along the forearm from near the wrist towards the elbow. The plain white backdrop and white clothing keep the focus on the arm and the line.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Osric had been sent up the tower stair at dawn with a pot of ink and a ruler, because the sundial on the south wall had drifted again and the abbot wanted the hours true before the Feast of St Cuthbert. The wind came through the louvres in long cold breaths. He drew the line himself, a single stroke from the wrist towards the elbow, and told the young oblate holding the lamp that it was a plumb, not a sin, and that a man could carry a true thing on his arm as easily as on a board.

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By noon the cloud had thinned to a white glare and the shadow of the gnomon had gone soft at its edges. Osric raised his arm straight over his head, the way he had been taught to sight the stone, and laid the ink against the shadow. The two lay together like the strings of a lute. He held the pose while the oblate counted breaths, nineteen of them, and the shadow did not move.

When he lowered his arm the line had smudged a little with sweat. The oblate asked whether the sundial was right now. Osric said it had been right since the day it was built, and that the trouble had only ever been the men who looked at it, who tilted their heads and wanted the sun to agree with them.

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