Fine line eye with radiating rays in dark blue-black ink on the upper arm, with a small tattoo on a finger of the same hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small eye tattoo with rays on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long red hair holds her opposite shoulder, showing a small eye tattoo with radiating rays on the outer upper arm. The linework is fine and delicate, with the eye and rays drawn in dark blue-black ink and little or no shading. A small blue tattoo is also visible on one finger, and the background is filled with green houseplants and a cream crocheted top.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The eye went onto the bow the night before we crossed, because my uncle said a boat needs something that sees before it is seen. He painted it himself with a brush made from a cat's tail and the last of the blue enamel from the tin that had held lamp oil, and he drew rays around it like a child drawing the sun, each one fine as thread. The coastguard lamp swept the water twice while he worked. He did not look up.

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We went out past the breakwater at Saint Aubin with four crates under tarpaulin and a lantern hooded to a slit. The border ran somewhere through the middle of the water, marked by nothing but a buoy with a dented cap and the habit of men on both sides who had agreed not to look at it. I held the tiller and watched the eye instead of the sea. Teo claimed the painted eye could tell a patrol from a fishing fleet by the way its light moved. I did not believe him, but I liked the idea that something on the boat was keeping watch while I was too tired to.

Near the buoy the patrol light came round, slow and white, and stopped on us. My hands went cold on the wood. Then the beam slid past the bow, lingered on the blue eye and its rays, and moved on toward the trawlers behind us. Nobody shouted. Teo laughed under his breath and said the coastguard had probably seen its own reflection in the paint and felt guilty.

We landed at dawn on the wrong side of the map, which was the right side for us. Teo rubbed a crust of salt off the eye with his thumb and left it open to the sky. The rays had caught the first sun and looked, for a moment, as if they were pointing us home.

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