Black fine line stars trailing from the nape of the neck down the upper back of a woman with red braided hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Star trail tattoo on the upper back and neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A rear view of a woman with red hair in a braided updo, wearing a black sequined one-shoulder top. A scattered trail of small black star outlines and dots runs diagonally from the nape of the neck towards the shoulder blade. The linework is fine and the ink is solid black, with the blurred background showing other people and lights.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire is only warm where you are sitting. Now, you want the one about Catriona Beag and the night the fog came down over the Sound. Everyone on Eilean Ruadh knows the story, but they tell it wrong, so I will tell it right.

Keep reading

She was seventeen that autumn and had never been past the skerry. Her father's boat was out beyond the reef and the light had gone from the water. She did not panic. Her grandmother had taught her the old way: find the stars that scatter off the line of the hill, count them down to the one that never moves, and let them walk you home. Seven small stars, then a gap, then three more, dropped like salt spilled off a knuckle.

She climbed the path to the cairn with her lantern held low, because a high lantern hides the sky. The wind kept trying to take her cap. Below, the sea made the sound it makes when it is pleased with itself. At the top she found the stars exactly where her grandmother said they would be, and the trail led her not down to the harbour but over the western slope, where her father's boat was coming in on the stars alone, its own lantern dead. He had been following the same trail from the other side.

They met at the foot of the rocks, soaked and furious, and neither of them said a word about the fog. Her father only pointed up. The trail was still there, faint as ever, and it has been there every clear night since. Don't look for it with your eyes tonight. Look with your hands, the way she did, and let the dark tell you where to step.

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