Small black and grey ornate cross tattoo with dotted detail on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small ornate cross on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small cross tattoo sits on the upper back, close to the shoulder blade, with its arms and base decorated by dotted and scalloped detail. The linework is solid and the cross is shaded in grey and black ink against the skin. The image is a close, slightly angled shot with a green tie on a blue top and a blurred green background.

Back Cross Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate at the top of Inchmurran had rusted through in the gale, and Ewan Cairns carried the iron cross-piece down to his forge on one shoulder, rain running off it in threads. His aunt said the stone cross on her husband's grave needed nothing more than a coat of tar. Ewan had seen the cast arms snapped at the joint, and he knew tar would not hold them.

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He worked through the afternoon with the bellows wheezing. The arms had been cut with scallops along their edges, like the lace on a christening shawl, and every ring of raised dots had been punched by a man long dead. Ewan could not find a punch to match them, so he cut his own from an old hinge pin and struck until his wrist ached, counting each dot aloud so he would not lose his place.

By dusk the cross was whole again, the new weld dulled with soot until it matched the rest. Ewan carried it up the path in the last light, past the ferry shed where the boats knocked against the pier. His aunt waited at the stile with a lantern, and she ran her thumb over the dots without speaking.

"Your grandfather did those," she said at last. "I always thought he made them with his teeth." Ewan laughed, and she didn't, and then she did, and the lantern swung between them as they went down to set the cross in its socket. The tide came over the causeway while they worked, and neither of them thought to hurry.