Small black fine-line Libra symbol tattooed on the upper back beside the armpit, with the wearer's arm raised across a striped top.

Small Libra symbol on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a person's upper back and raised arm, with a small black tattoo of the astrological Libra symbol sitting near the shoulder blade. The lines are simple and solid, with no shading, and the tattoo is the only detail of colour against the white and navy striped top and grey painted wall. The framing is tight and off-centre, with the tattoo placed on the left third of the frame.

Back Zodiac symbol Sign

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mae Tollard kept the weighing beam at Skerry Quay for thirty-one years, and in all that time the scales had never once tipped in a boat's favour. Her father had hung them from the crane post with two pans of hammered tin, and the beam was a length of ash worn pale where the fishermen's thumbs had rubbed it for luck. When the herring came in silver and heavy, the men stood round with their hands in their oilskins and watched the needle, saying nothing, because everyone knew what it would say.

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Then came the autumn the sea went quiet. Boats came back with nets that weighed less than the corks on them, and the men began to mutter about the weighing. Tobias Greave, who owned three boats and a grudge against the tide, slid a lead weight into his pan one morning and swore the needle had dropped before she touched it. Mae looked at him for a long time. She lifted the lead out, set it back on the same spot, and said the scales had never lied, only waited.

That night she rowed out alone to the slack water off the Needle rock with a coil of tarred line and a lantern. She lowered both pans into the black, tied the beam steady to the gunwale, and sat with her hands in her lap until the moon sat level on the water. Nobody saw what she did out there, but at first light the pans hung true, and the needle stood dead centre without a tremor.

From then on the men brought their catch to the quay as they found it, and the beam settled where it ought. Tobias came last, with the smallest haul of the season, and he stood by the scales a while before he spoke. Mae only nodded at the needle, and he understood that the balance would hold for him as it held for everyone, provided he stopped asking it to lean.