Black and grey realism tattoo on the shoulder showing torn skin with armour plates, buckles and a Celtic knot.

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Torn skin revealing armour and a Celtic knot

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows skin peeled back to reveal layered metal armour plates with rivets and a buckle strap across the upper shoulder. A circular Celtic knot sits on the rounded armour piece at the top of the shoulder. The shading is soft and detailed, with strong highlights and shadows that give the metal a three-dimensional look, and the image is a close crop of the shoulder and upper back on a plain background.

Realism Shoulder Armour Celtic knot Torn skin Rivet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Aunt Brenna,

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The pass closed on Tuesday and we have been snowed into the Hollin Cross inn ever since, four days now, with a dozen carters, a priest who snores like a bellows, and Master Corran's great harness laid out on the trestle by the hearth. You will not believe what the shoulder plate has done. The left pauldron split along a rivet line when the horse went down on the ice above Carrick Gap, and he wants it mended before the spring fair, so I have been sitting up with a lamp and a bone-handled awl, working the leather straps loose one buckle at a time.

The knot is the thing I keep looking at. Corran had it cut into the rounded top of the plate by a smith in Lindisfarne, a single endless cord that goes over and under itself and never once ends. He says it is so a man can never find where his oath begins or ends. I said that sounds like a lot of work to put on a shoulder. He laughed until the innkeeper's wife came to see what was wrong.

Last night the wind dropped and I went out to the yard. Everything was white and blue under the moon, the stable roof bent low, and the metal of the plate was cold enough to burn my fingers when I lifted it from the sill. I thought of you hanging the washing in the rain and how you always said cold iron is honest about itself.

The plate is fixed now. I hammered the split flat, polished the rivets until they caught the lamp, and stitched a new tongue into the buckle strap. Corran tried it on this morning and rolled his arm twice, grinning like a boy. Tell Father the pass should open by Friday. I will be home before the blackthorn.

Your loving nephew, Tam