Black and grey tattoo of a skull above a star-marked banner with a lettered phrase ending in unafraid, on the upper arm.

Skull and banner on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of an animal skull rests on a curled banner with a five-pointed star on its centre. Lettering on the banner reads part of a phrase ending in UNAFRAID, and the outline has fine, even linework with soft grey shading on the skull. The tattoo sits near the centre of the frame against a plain light background with tiled flooring.

Upper arm Skull Banner Star Lettering Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Tremayne had buried three dogs in the orchard above Porthgwidden, and she never let the children dig up the bones. So when Eli came up from the cliffs with a skull wrapped in his jumper, she took it off him at the kitchen door and set it on the dresser beside the tea caddy without a word.

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It was a collie's skull, or near enough, its long jaw bleached the colour of old candle wax. Eli said the rain had washed the earth from the eye sockets below the engine house, as if someone had polished them. His grandmother said nothing about that. She fetched the tin of enamel she kept for mending the lifeboat sign, and on a strip of linen she painted a small black star, the way the old fishermen marked their boats, then stitched the strip under the jaw like a ribbon at a fair.

The following winter his father went out with the Porthgwidden crew when the sea turned white at the harbour mouth. Eli stood at the dresser all that night, touching the star with one finger, while the wind pulled at the shutters. Near dawn the lamp in the window caught the cloth, and he read the words his grandmother had stitched beneath it, the thread gone grey with washing: keep the light and stay unafraid.

The boat came in at six with all four men aboard. Mrs Tremayne didn't look up from the bread. She only said, to nobody in particular, that the dog had always been a good judge of weather.