Black and grey fine line tattoo of a tree above the script words i climbed the tree to see the world, on the inner forearm.

Tree and quote on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a shaded tree with a thin ground line sits above a handwritten quote in cursive script, reading i climbed the tree to see the world. The tree is drawn with fine, stippled linework and soft shading, while the lettering uses thin, even strokes. The photograph is taken close up in black and white against a blurred background, with the design centred on the inner forearm.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Tree Quote Script Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ione had been up the plane tree since before the goats were milked, and her mother's voice came up through the leaves like a thrown stone. "Come down before the ground decides to eat you." Ione did not answer. From the third branch she could see the whole road that wound out of the valley, pale as a shed snakeskin, and the dust rising where the salt carts from the coast were coming up the hill.

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Her grandmother said the tree was older than the village wall, planted by a man who wanted shade for his horses and got a forest instead. Ione had no interest in horses. She wanted the carts, which carried things she had never seen: blue glass from over the water, a bird that talked in a language nobody could name, a man with a tooth of real gold who had paid for a cup of wine with it. Her brother Kallis climbed up after her with a knife and a heel of bread, and sat on the lowest limb notching the bark with the point of his blade, so the tree kept a record of who had been there.

"You'll fall," he said with his mouth full. "Then I'll see the world from the ground," she said, and he laughed so hard he nearly lost the bread. Down the road a cart had stopped at the spring. A girl about her own age sat at the back with her feet hanging over the edge, and when she lifted one hand to shade her eyes, Ione lifted hers back.

By dusk the carts had gone on towards the market and her mother had stopped shouting. Ione climbed down slowly, her palms sore, and found Kallis's marks still fresh on the trunk. Beside them she cut a line of her own, deeper than his, so that rain would not smooth it away before the spring.