Realistic tattoo of torn armour revealing chainmail, with a winged Celtic cross on the pauldron, covering a man's shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Torn armour and Celtic cross on shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A shirtless man shows a large tattoo across his shoulder and upper arm, drawn as plate armour with ripped skin peeling back to reveal chainmail beneath. A winged Celtic cross sits on the shoulder plate, and ornate scrollwork decorates the metal bands. The shading is highly detailed, with metallic highlights, muted brown and grey tones, and touches of blue in the eagle's eye.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Armour Wing Eagle Torn skin Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the frost came early this year and the beck has frozen to the stones below the mill. I write by the kitchen fire because the parlour grate has cracked and Father will not hear of mending it until spring. You will laugh, but I have brought the armour down from the rafters. I dragged the sack out from under the hay, the breastplate and the shoulder plates he beat out the winter the bailiff came. He always said the cross was for show, though he was the one who scratched it into the steel with a nail point when he thought no one was watching.

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The eagle is the part that frightens me. Mistress Hale brought the blue glass for its eye from the Bruges market, and Father set it in with pitch so carefully that when I held the left pauldron to the window this morning, the light came through it like a drop of the sea. The rings of the mail I have scoured with sand and vinegar since Martinmas, a hundred rings a night, until my knuckles split and bled onto the wire. It is the least I can do, since you are the one who will wear it up at the border while I sit here counting sacks of barley.

Last night I dreamed the steel was warm, as if someone had left it too near the forge. I woke and went down to the cold kitchen and sat with the plates across my knees until the window greyed. Father would have called it foolishness. I called it keeping watch.

I have wrapped the cross in oilcloth and stitched it into the lining of your good coat, where the wool is thickest. If the snow comes over the pass, keep the eagle's eye turned to the sky and mind the ford at Coldwell. Write when you can. Your sister, Agnes.