Dark grey solid star tattoo at the base of a person's neck, seen from behind, with one hand raised to their head.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Star tattoo at the nape of the neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph taken from behind shows a person with dark hair and a red-orange top, one hand raised to the back of their head. A single five-pointed star sits at the base of the neck, filled in solid black or dark grey with no visible outline shading. The background is softly out of focus, keeping the attention on the star.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chart on the wall of my father's back room was wrong, and everyone in Mardle knew it except the man who had drawn it. Seventeen fishing smacks had gone out past the Cutter Bank that winter with that sheet folded in their oilskins, and every one of them came home, because my father had put a star where no star should be.

Keep reading

He made it with a dip pen and a bottle of iron-gall ink, a small solid point at the foot of the harbour wall, which he swore was the fixed mark for the north shoal. Nobody argued with him. Mr Gurney from the chandlery argued, then went out in the rain on the Saturday and came back with a basket of skate and a sheepish face.

I asked him once why he never filled the star in properly, why it looked more like a thumbprint than a mark. He said a star that is shaded is a star someone has finished looking at. Leave it dark enough to see and sailors will keep looking up.

When he died I found the original sheet in the bottom drawer, and the star was not on it at all. There was only a faint pencil cross and a line in his square hand: Ask the boats. I have. Every skipper in Mardle says the same thing, that the sky over the harbour mouth looks wrong from the water, and that if you steer for the dark spot, you come home.

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