Small black Chinese character tattoo in fine line on the inner forearm near the wrist, photographed against window blinds.

Small Chinese character on the forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single small Chinese character is tattooed in black ink on the inner forearm, close to the wrist. The strokes are thin and even, with no shading, and the character sits centred on a plain area of skin. The background is white window blinds with a dark green window pane behind them, and the image is in full colour but the only ink is black.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Character Chinese character Script Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry from Mull was late again, so Ada sat on the harbour wall with the postcard across her knee and read the one word she had written on it for the third time. Her brother Tam had always said she could never keep a sentence to a single line, and he would laugh to see how little she had managed now. The ink had sunk into the card's grey fibres where her thumb had pressed too hard.

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Behind her the chandler's shutters were coming down one by one, and a gull walked the gutter as if it owned the street. She thought about the tin of brushes in her father's boathouse, the sable tips worn to points, and how he used to paint a single small mark on the transom of every boat he finished. It was never large enough to read from the quay. Nobody on the island had ever asked him what it meant, and he had never said.

When the ferry finally nosed past the breakwater she stood and folded the card in half, then in half again, so the word hid against the crease. The purser, who had known her since she was small enough to be lifted over the gangway, held out his hand for it without being asked. "Mainland post?" he said. "Aye, for Tam," she said. "He'll know what it says."

She watched the card disappear into his coat pocket and realised she had never told her brother what the mark on their father's boat meant either. The engine turned over beneath the deck and the gulls lifted off the wall all at once, and Ada did not wave, because nobody on the quay was looking for her.