Close-up of a small black fine line Roman numeral tattoo with a dot between the characters on the side of a finger, with red painted nails resting on a steering wheel.

Small Roman numeral tattoo on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with red painted nails rests on a dark steering wheel bearing a three-pointed star emblem. A small black tattoo of Roman numerals, with a dot between the characters, sits on the side of one finger. The linework is fine and crisp, and the ink is solid black against pale skin, with soft natural light and a shallow focus on the background.

Fine line Lettering Hand Roman numeral Numeral Dot Hand Finger

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bell in Varrow Tower has been cracked since my grandmother's day, so the Keeper of the Hours rings the noon stroke by hand. Twelve pulls on the rope, one for each gate the old charter names. In forty years I had never once miscounted them. My master used to say that was the whole of the trade: counting honestly and never wanting thanks for it.

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The winter the river froze, a stranger came up the Sallow Road with a letter sealed in green wax. It was addressed to whoever kept the tower, and it asked, in a hand so neat it looked ruled, why the clock face carried a small dot set between the ten and the two. I told him the dot marked the hinge of the day, the moment the sun stood still before it leaned away. He said that was a poor reason for a mark. I said it was the only reason the city had ever needed.

He stayed nine days and copied every gate name into a book. On the last evening he climbed with me to the belfry and asked me to ring only the one stroke, for the dot. I refused. The charter says twelve. When I came down, he had left a copper coin on the sill, stamped with the same two numerals and the same small mark, and beneath it a scrap in that ruled hand: the dot is where you stop, not where you begin.

I still pull twelve every noon, and I still hold the coin in my palm while the last stroke fades over the roofs. Then I stop, as he showed me, and let the silence sit on the dot until the sparrows come back to the ledge.