Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of a horse head inside a circle with construction lines, on the forearm.

Sketched horse head in a circle

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A horse head in profile sits inside a bold circular outline, with ears and muzzle drawn in loose, sketchy strokes. Stippled dotwork and fine hatching shade the head and the area around it, while thin crossing lines suggest a geometric grid behind the figure. The piece is entirely black ink on pale skin, centred in the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The mare got out again on Tuesday, and this time she went straight through the new hedge the surveyors had pegged out. You'll remember Mr Pryce with his theodolite and his lengths of string, drawing lines across Hollins Field as if the ground had asked for them. By Thursday he had a grid laid over everything, thin lines crossing the meadow, and the round pond at the centre of it all, which he said was the only honest thing on the plan.

Halfpenny stood at the pond's edge with her head low and her ears flicking back and forth like she was reading something written on the water. I walked out with the bucket and she lifted her head, slow and unbothered, and the surface behind her went still in a perfect ring. Fine rain was starting, the kind that looks like pepper on a slate. I didn't try to catch her. I just stood there with the oats while she decided whether I was worth the trouble.

Mr Pryce came back at dusk to find his string snapped and trailing in the grass. He was ready to shout until he saw her silhouetted against the last of the light, head raised inside the ring of the pond's bank, all her edges scratched out and blurred by the rain. He didn't say anything for a long while. Then he coiled the broken string into his coat pocket and said the grid could live in his ledger, where it belonged.

Come home in the spring. The gate is open, the pond has a ring of beaten earth round it where she drinks, and I've left you the bucket by the door.

Yours, Edith

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