Three black outlined stars with blue and teal paint-like splashes on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three stars on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

Three bold, angular star outlines run diagonally down the upper arm, each with a loose black brush-like edge. Blue and teal splashes sit inside and around the stars, adding colour to the otherwise black linework. The photo is taken close up against a plain pale background, with a grey sleeve visible at the top right.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan,

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Three stars came up over the Pentland Firth last night, one after another, like someone lighting a row of lamps down a jetty. Cook says they belong to a constellation with a name I can't pronounce, but I've decided they're ours, the three of us who signed on at Scrabster in March and haven't yet been sick over the side. Bosun says naming stars is bad luck. I told him the sea has heard worse.

The galley is hot enough to sweat through a jumper by six. I dropped a tray of oatcakes this morning and the ship's cat made off with two before I could stop it. Skipper laughed so hard he had to sit on the coal bin. Mr Ogilvie, who has been at sea since before the war, says the best stew is the one you're ashamed of until the dish comes back empty. I've made it every Tuesday since, and every Tuesday it comes back empty.

We turn for home on Friday if the glass holds. The water goes black in the troughs, then pewter, then a blue so deep it looks like the bottom of a bottle someone forgot to finish. Last night, when the wind dropped, I stood at the rail with a spoon still in my hand and watched the phosphorus flare off the bow like ink going into wet paper. That was the closest I came to crying all month.

You asked me to send you something I'd drawn, so I'm enclosing the back of the menu card. It's three stars, rough at the edges where the pencil skipped, with a smudge of blue from the biro Ogilvie lent me. Put it on the mantel where the clock used to be. I'll be home before the kettle goes cold.

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