Colourful geometric tattoo on an upper arm showing two stag antlers and deer eyes overlaid with pink, purple, teal and yellow triangles and thin black lines.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stag and watercolour triangles on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two stag antlers and a pair of deer eyes, with a third stag face near the centre, drawn in fine black linework. Overlapping translucent triangles in pink, purple, blue, yellow and teal sit behind and across the animal forms, with a thin black vertical line and a black outlined diamond shape. The composition is vertical and runs along the upper arm, with soft, watery colour blending against the darker linework.

Geometric Upper arm Stag Antler Deer Eye Triangle Diamond Geometric line Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Morag,

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The rain has finally lifted off Carn Dubh and I have three stations fixed on the ridge. Yesterday the theodolite sat in the wet heather for four hours waiting for the cloud to come apart, and when it did, I saw the stags. Six of them, maybe eight, standing on the far slope with the light coming through the gap behind them in long slanted sheets. Their antlers caught it and the whole hill went pink, then violet, then a bruised blue that I had to write down before it changed.

I took the bearings anyway. Triangulation is what I am paid for, and the old benchmark on the summit is still where the Ordnance drew it in 1851, a small iron pin in a square of cut stone. From the pin to the cairn, from the cairn to the lochan, and back, the three lines close with an error of less than a hand's width. I sat with my pencil and felt, for once, that the land was agreeing with the paper.

Then the big stag turned his head and looked straight down the instrument at me. I swear he knew the line I was drawing. I rubbed out the last number, left the sheet blank, and walked down the hill without the final figure. Some measurements are better left open. I will bring the sketch when I come home, and you can tell me whether a man is allowed to fold a diamond into a survey.

Yours, Iain