Collage of six small black fine line tattoos: stars near the collarbone, an arrow and a crescent moon on fingers, a chevron on the back of the neck, a music note on a finger and a small bird on the

Tiny fine line tattoos on neck, fingers and wrist

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

This collage shows six close-up photographs of very small tattoos on skin. The designs include a cluster of three stars near the collarbone, an arrow on a finger, a crescent moon on another finger, a chevron on the back of the neck, a music note on a finger and a small bird on the wrist. All the linework is thin and in black ink, and each photo is framed as a white polaroid-style print against a plain background.

Fine line Neck Hand Other Star Arrow Crescent moon Chevron Music note Bird Finger Neck

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The caller's cards lived in a biscuit tin with a cracked lid, and Aunt Morwenna would let nobody else touch them. On the morning of the wedding she laid them out along the trestle in the village hall, each one inked with a small sign that only the people of Llanfair had ever learned to read: a chevron for the turn, an arrow for the long line, a crescent for the dance you did with the lamps out, three stars for the last set before the bus came.

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I was the fiddler, hired from Hereford on the strength of a recording nobody had heard all the way through. I knew reels. I did not know the cards. Morwenna pressed one into my hand, a music note drawn with a shaky, careful nib. 'Not until Gareth sits down,' she said. 'Then play it slow, and don't look at the bride. She'll start crying, and then so will you.'

The dancing went on through the afternoon, the chevrons sending couples round the room and the arrows sending them down the middle as if they'd been fired. Gareth, who had held the hall keys for thirty years, eventually sat on the step by the kitchen hatch with a glass of cider. I lifted the bow. The room softened the way old floorboards do when the weight comes off them.

Morwenna came over at the end and turned over the last card in the tin. It had a small bird on it, one wing lifted. 'That's for when somebody's missing,' she said. 'Sylvia taught the step. Somebody has to do it on their own.' Gareth stood, set his glass on the hatch, and walked out onto the empty floor with his hands in his pockets, stepping the way his wife had stepped. Nobody clapped until he finished.