Two hands held together, each showing a colour traditional dagger tattoo with an eye on the handle, placed on the back of the hand near the wrist.

Traditional dagger tattoos on both hands

Traditional · Hand · Mixed · Photo

Two hands are clasped together, each showing a matching traditional-style dagger tattoo with a green eye set into the hilt, a red gem, and a yellow crossguard. The blades are shaded in grey and black, with small red drips falling from the tips. The close crop keeps the focus on the tattoos, with a lace fabric and a sleeve tattoo softly blurred in the background.

Traditional Hand Dagger Eye Blade Ribbon Drip Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gull had been at the bins again when you came down to breakfast, and the whole of Harbour Row smelled of vinegar and low tide. Mrs Abney had set out two cups by the bay window without asking which of you took sugar. Your brother was already there, turning a brass pencil between his fingers, and he did not look up when you sat. Between you on the cloth lay two letters the postman had brought, both sealed in the same red wax, both addressed to the house in your father's careful hand.

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You had never liked the house. Its landlady kept a register of every guest in a drawer beneath a tin eye nailed to the wall, and she swore the eye had watched the bay since her grandfather's day, counting boats that did not come home. Years ago the two of you had walked the cliff path after a quarrel and sworn, palm to palm, that you would leave on the same morning. You had both drawn the same dagger on the back of your hands that night in biro, its point dripping, and you had laughed about it until the laughing stopped.

Your brother slid his letter across. Inside was one line: the house is yours if you stay until the tide turns. You read it twice and folded it small, the way you once folded notes to pass in chapel. Mrs Abney stood in the doorway with the teapot, looking at the two sealed envelopes as if she had been waiting all morning for you to open them.

"Stay," you said, "or we go before she sees the wax." He pushed back his chair, and the tin eye above the stairs seemed to catch the light. A single drop from the candle slid down the side of the holder and pooled on the sill, and you let it spread, because the sea would be the same tomorrow and so would the eye.