Fine line black outline of a small bow tattooed on the side of a finger, with the hand held in a loose fist against a warm cream background.

Small outline bow tattoo on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small bow with loopy ribbon ends is outlined in black ink on the side of a finger. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design sits near the knuckle. The warm, pale background and the hand held in a fist keep the focus on the tattoo, with leopard print nail polish visible at the fingertips.

Fine line Hand Bow Ribbon Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Below the pass, the village of Hallow Cross kept a custom older than the road. Every spring each household tied a length of red ribbon to the iron post at the summit, so the wind would know whose door to knock on before it came down into the valley. Ada Penrose tied her first ribbon at seven, and every year after, her mother's bow was the neatest on the post, looped twice with tails long enough that the weather could not undo them.

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The year the snow stayed late, the post was still bare at midsummer. Ada climbed alone with a spool of thread and the shears her father used on fleeces. The wind was cold enough to stiffen her fingers, and she knotted and unknotted the ribbon three times before the bow sat the way her mother's had. She did not tie it for the valley. She tied it for the carter, Tom Ashby, who had walked the pass every Friday for thirty years and had not come back from the last crossing.

On the way down she found the carter's mule standing at the bend, saddle empty, reins hanging. It came to her the way a dog would. Knotted into its bridle was a red bow, looped twice, its tails long and even. She knew the knot before she saw the colour. Her mother had come up the pass in the dark, before Ada had even finished her breakfast, and had said nothing about it.

At the bottom of the track a lantern was waiting. Her mother took the reins from her without a word, looked at the bow on the mule, then at Ada's hands, and nodded once, as if a ribbon on the post had been answered.