Small black dotwork bow tattoo on the wrist, with another hand resting against it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small dotwork bow on a wrist

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small bow shape is formed entirely from black dots on the wrist of a hand that is partly out of focus. Another hand rests against it in the background. The dots are spaced loosely, and the bow sits alone on bare skin against a soft, warm-toned cloth.

Dotwork Forearm Bow Dot Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bow was Demetrios's mark, and he pricked it into every length of ribbon with a bone needle dipped in soot, because the forger two streets over copied everything except the spacing. Cora had spent three weeks learning to leave the dots loose. Packed close, they bled into one smudge when the cloth went into the vat, and the bow became a stain. Set apart, the ink could spread and still hold its shape.

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On the morning the widow Sosia came along the Curetes Street with a faded ribbon folded in her palm, Demetrios was down at the harbour arguing about salt. Sosia laid the length across the counter. It had been the colour of a bruised plum, though the sun had taken the edges, and the mark in the middle had gone grey and wide, the dots drifting apart like seed heads on a windy day. "The forger's work," she said. "You told me it would last."

Cora carried the ribbon to the window and held it up to the light. She had never been asked to judge his work before. The dots had not merged. Each one had wandered a little, the way loose ones always did, but none had touched its neighbour, so the bow had kept its two loops and its knot through years of sun and washing. The forger's marks, the ones pressed tight together, had run into blots long ago.

"It's still a bow," Cora said. "Look. It's only further apart than it was." Sosia studied it for a long moment, then folded it back into her palm and smiled. "Then he taught you properly," she said, and paid for a fresh length in copper, though she had no use for one.