Black and white tribal armband designs with a central tiki face motif, shown in several sizes on grey body silhouettes for upper arm placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal armband designs on silhouettes

Upper arm · Black and grey · Flash

A set of black tribal designs is shown in several sizes over grey human silhouettes. The largest band runs across the lower middle of the image and has a central tiki-style face flanked by spirals, curves and geometric blocks. Smaller armband versions sit on the upper arms of the figures, all in solid black linework on a plain white and grey background.

Upper arm Other Tribal pattern Armband Spiral Silhouette Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp has been dark since Tuesday, so it falls to you to climb the iron stairs and find out why. Mrs Affleck has left the stationery drawer open on the gallery rail, and inside it are the stencil sheets her nephew posted from Auckland, black bands of spirals and blocky squares he swore would keep the gulls off the railings. You pick one up. The face at the centre stares back with its jaw clenched and its eyes ringed in little squares, like a man who knows the tide is about to turn.

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The bands were meant as a joke for the crew of the supply boat, a running argument between Mrs Affleck and her nephew about sailors who dress like islanders on a postcard. You are not amused. Mid-morning the wind swings round and the clockwork seizes, and you kneel at the pedestal with oil on your fingers, following a spiral with your thumb until the pawl catches. The geometric blocks lock together like teeth. By noon the beam is sweeping out over the water again, and nobody is watching it but you.

That evening the fog comes in thick as wool, and the boat is still out beyond the Carrick reef. You stand on the gallery with the stencil folded in your coat pocket and count the blocks along its edge the way your father used to count buoys. The horn sounds once, then twice. Below, a hull knocks against the landing steps, and a voice calls up your name in the rough accent you know by heart.

You fold the sheet along its old crease and leave it in the drawer, the carved face still turned up, watching the stairs.