Black fine line tattoo of a treble clef entwined with swirling vines and leaves, on the upper back below the nape of the neck.

Treble clef and vine swirls on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A treble clef is combined with curling scrolls, tendrils and small leaves that spread outward and trail downward across the upper back. The linework is thin and even, in solid black with some lighter grey-blue tones in the left-hand swirls. The tattoo is centred on the skin in a close crop, with a short-haired subject facing away from the camera.

Fine line Botanical Back Treble clef Music Swirl Vine Leaves Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind has been wrong since Tuesday, and Iolo Probert won't let you climb to the Gap of Crows without the tuning fork in your coat pocket. He says the pass used to hum a steady low note when the snow lay thick, a note the drovers steered by. Now it wavers, rising and curling back on itself like a bramble shoot searching for a fence post.

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You reach the saddle at noon with the sun behind a skin of cloud. The rock on the north side is split by three long fissures, and when the gusts pour through them they sing in a sequence you can almost count. You sketch the shape in pencil on the back of a survey form: a looping tail, a tall upright stroke, then a spiral that drops low and turns sharp. Iolo laughs at you for drawing a clef, then goes quiet when you hold the paper up to the light.

Between the stones grow thin trailing vines of wild clematis, their leaves no bigger than a fingernail, spilling off the ledge in curls that match your sketch almost exactly. Iolo says his grandmother told him the pass was a written score and the plants were notes that had slipped off the page. You don't believe him, but you pin the sheet inside the ledger anyway, beside the rainfall figures.

On the descent the wind drops away, and you stop at the cairn to listen. Nothing. Then one gust slips through the cleft and the whole slope answers in a long rising phrase, and you hum it back under your breath all the way down to the village lights.