Fine line black arrow tattoo with striped fletching and dotted shaft across the side ribs, below a dark top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow tattoo on the side ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small arrow runs horizontally across the side of the torso, with its fletching at the left and a solid arrowhead pointing right. The shaft is a thin black line broken up by evenly spaced dots, and the fletching is shaded with a few parallel stripes. The ink is solid black on pale skin, set against a dark top at the upper edge of the frame.

Fine line Ribs Arrow Dot Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lamp has been giving us trouble since the equinox gales took the top pane off the gallery. Dad says the glass will come from Stromness on the next boat, if the boat ever comes. Meanwhile I climb up each dusk with the paraffin and the spirit cloth, and I count the rotations the way you taught me, out loud, so the numbers keep my hands steady.

Yesterday I found the old signal book in the drawer under the tide tables. Somebody, probably Granny Ruth, had drawn an arrow in the margin beside the page for fog horns. It points east, the way the Mary Lyle would have come home. The fletching is three feathers done in tight stripes, and along the shaft she put dots, one every inch or so, like the buoys you used to count from the jetty. The head is solid, filled in black, so you could read it from a rowing boat in the murk.

I have been thinking that the dots are the true part. Anyone can draw a point. It is the little marks along the way that tell a man he is still on course. So I have started a tally in pencil beside the arrow, one dot for each night the light has stayed lit without a miss. Thirty-one so far. Dad pretends not to notice, but this morning he added one himself, a little crooked, and said nothing.

Come home when the glass is in. Bring the good twine.

Your sister, Ellen