Three ankles with matching black fine line tattoos of stick figure families, resting on a white bed sheet.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stick figure family tattoos on three ankles

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Three bare feet rest on a white sheet, each showing a small black tattoo of a row of simple stick figures of differing heights. The linework is thin and uniform, with no shading, and small pinkish marks sit near the figures. The tattoos are placed close together in the frame, with the feet overlapping to draw the eye across the matching designs.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You had not planned on the ink. It was Dessa's idea, made over a bottle of cheap cider on the quay after the squall took the spare net and nearly took Pete with it. She drew the figures on the back of a fish-box invoice: four little men in a row, the tallest at the back, the smallest tucked in front where the deck was narrowest.

Keep reading

Pete hauled the stern line for three nights after that without swearing once, which told you how frightened he'd been. The tattooist in Penzance laughed when you asked for the same figures on three ankles, then went quiet and did it properly, his needle thin as a gutting knife, no shading, nothing to make them look like anything but what they were: people standing where they could see each other.

The first morning the ink was scabbed, you couldn't get your boots on without wincing. Dessa swore at hers, Marek hummed through his, and Pete pulled a sock over his like a man hiding a bruise. Out on the grounds the following week the sea came green over the rail and the deck dropped away under you, and you looked down without meaning to at the row of tiny figures, and counted them the way you'd count a crew after a wave, lips moving, until you reached the last one and found the count was right.

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