Black and grey tattoo of three small white-faced forest spirits perched on a gnarled branch, placed on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three forest spirits on a branch on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three small round-headed forest spirits sitting on a twisted tree branch, with a root or branch trailing down below them. The linework is loose and sketchy, with soft grey shading on the branch and figures against the pale skin. The image is in black and grey, with the tattoo centred on the side of a torso while a checked shirt is held up beside it.

Ribs Creature Root Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The spirits came down the ridge every autumn when the bracken turned the colour of rust, and Mrs Haldane at Coldharbour Farm always left a saucer of milk on the stile for them. Her grandson Tom thought it was superstition until the year the oak at the top of Blackmoss Wood came down in the gale, and the three small grey-faced things were found sitting in its crown, their knees drawn up, looking at the village as if it were the strange thing.

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Nobody could move them. The vicar tried, then the council man with his tractor, then Tom, who climbed up with a bread knife and a promise. The spirits watched him come. The biggest one, no taller than a teapot, reached out and tugged the knife from his belt with a patience that made him feel very young. It turned the blade over, then handed it back handle first, and went back to staring at the fields.

Tom understood then that they were not stuck. They were waiting for the root to take hold again, and the root was waiting for someone to stop trying to pull it up. He spent that winter bringing them saucers of milk and sitting beside the fallen trunk while the frost came down, saying nothing, the way his grandmother had taught him.

In March a green shoot pushed up from the splintered stump. The spirits climbed down, one after another, and walked into the wood without looking back, leaving three small dents in the moss and a saucer licked clean on the stile.