Fine line black tattoo of a looping swirl symbol with a small numeral beside it, on the inner ankle above a pink sock.

Swirl symbol with small numeral on ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a looping swirl symbol, with a tiny numeral-like mark beside its lower curl, sits on a person's lower leg above a pink sock. The thin, even black linework has a delicate fine line finish. The photo is taken in dim lighting against a dark background, with the tattoo placed near the centre of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

On the island of Haskeld, the wind wrote its names in the sand every morning, and nobody read them but the old ferrywoman, Ysolde Marr, who kept the boat that crossed to the mainland twice a week.

Keep reading

Her grandson Tam asked her one winter what the second mark meant. The swirl came first, she said, a loop that goes round and comes back to where it started. The small figure beside it was the count. The wind had written the swirl once for every man the sea had taken, and once more for the one who came home. Tam said that was a poor sum. She said the sea was a poor accountant.

When the storm came in February, the boat went out for Anders Hobb and his nephew. Ysolde rowed alone through the grey. She found the nephew clinging to a buoy, and she turned the boat in a long slow loop, the way the wind drew, until the tide carried them both back to the slip. She did not look at the sand that morning. She went straight to the cottage and scratched two notches into the doorpost with her knife.

On the sand the next day there was a swirl, and beside it a two, pressed fresh and clean. Tam crouched and traced it with one finger. It was not a count of the dead after all. It was a count of the ones the sea had given back, and this time the wind had let her write the second mark herself.

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