Black and white photograph of a tiny solid black star tattoo on the upper chest near the collarbone, with blurred hair above and a loose top below.

Small star tattoo near the collarbone

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A close, low-light black and white photograph of a person's upper chest and shoulder, with their hair blurred at the top of the frame. A very small solid black star sits on the skin just below the collarbone. The ink is dark and crisp against the soft grey skin tones, and the loose fabric strap across the lower half of the frame frames the tattoo.

Chest Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had already taken the lower path when Marta knocked on the hut door with her one good lamp, and I told her the Col would kill us both before dawn. She laughed at that. She said her father had said the same thing forty winters running and still went over with the mules.

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We went up the north side with a rope between us and the two grey mules stamping behind. Cloud came down so thick the lamp showed only our own breath. Somewhere above the ridge the cloud tore open for a moment, and there it was, one hard point of light hanging over the notch like a nail left in a board. Marta stopped so suddenly the rope jerked my shoulder. 'That one,' she said. 'That's the one he showed me.'

I did not ask who he was. On a pass you learn that people hand you their dead like parcels, and you carry them without opening the wrapping. We kept that star over our left shoulder for three hours. When the wind pushed us sideways, it was the star that told us which way was down, and the mules followed my hands more than my voice.

At the cairn she took a stub of charcoal from her coat and pressed a small point onto the flat stone at the top, then rubbed it with her thumb until it was a black star the size of a fingernail. 'For whoever comes after,' she said, and we went down into the valley with the sun coming up behind us.