Woman lying on white bedding with a small fine line black tattoo of three upright strokes on her inner forearm and a small script tattoo on her side near the ribs.

Small fine line tattoos on forearm and ribs

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman lies on white bedding in white underwear, with her arm folded across her torso. A small black tattoo of three vertical strokes sits on her inner forearm, and a tiny mark resembling a letter or symbol sits on her side above the hip. A further small line of script is visible higher on her side, near the ribs. The linework is delicate and the ink is black, with soft natural light and a plain white background.

Fine line Forearm Ribs Number Symbol Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cable office at Porthmellin smelt of wet wool and paraffin, and the Hollander had been overdue since Tuesday. Mr Tresize kept the tally on the back of the door in pencil, three strokes for every boat that had not come home, and by Thursday the wood was dark with them. I was sixteen and paid by the word, so I learned to read those strokes before I learned to read the messages.

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On the Friday a boy came running up the quay with a scrap of paper from the signal mast. It held a single line of figures, and beneath them, in a hand I knew from my own school copybooks, the initials R.S. and a time. Mr Tresize read it twice, then took his pencil and drew a fourth stroke, slanting, through the three. "That one's not a loss," he said. "That's a count of who's still breathing."

The Hollander came in on the evening tide with her foremast gone and a man lashed to the wheel who would not let go of it. Nobody asked me to send anything. I sat with my hand on the key and tapped out the only word I had been taught to send without a form: HOME. Down the line the sounder answered with a long dash and then a short, which in our code meant received and understood.

Years later I still hear that dash when the kettle sings. I never learned who R.S. was, and Mr Tresize took the answer with him to the churchyard. But I kept the habit of marking the door, and when the lines go quiet I still draw the slanted stroke through the three, because one of them always comes back.