Small black geometric tattoo of a solid triangle above a circle on the back of a neck, with a striped top below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Triangle and circle on the back of the neck

Geometric · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a solid black triangle sitting above a black outlined circle, with a smaller downward-pointing triangle outline inside the circle. The lines are clean and even, and the design is in solid black ink with no shading. It sits on the back of the neck against a plain pale background, with the subject's hair and ear visible at the top of the frame.

Geometric Neck Triangle Circle Geometric shape

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down and mind the dog. You want to know what the mark over the pier door means? My grandmother's grandmother cut it there with a borrowed chisel, and she was no mason, only a woman who had buried two husbands to the sea and would not bury a third.

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On Skerra the tide comes in like a tenant who never pays the rent. Every spring it climbed the slipway and sat in the kirk porch. So the old men agreed on a sign for the danger, and they chose what they could see from the boats: a flat black hill above the harbour, and beneath it a ring for the round world, with the water drawn down inside it like a sheet pulled from a bed.

Then came the winter of the bell. Ruaridh Gunn, eleven years old and wanting to be useful, was sent up the pier to ring the warning for the herring fleet. He saw the sea draw back past rocks where no sea had ever gone, and he knew what that meant. He did not ring the bell. He ran. The fleet came in on the last of the light, the women came down the slipway with lanterns, and the water came up behind them as far as the mark.

So they cut the sign into the stone, and every child since has been taught to read it. High ground, the round world, and the tide going out again if you are quick. Now hush. The kettle's on. And when you go, mind the step, because the tide turns at ten.