Black and grey tribal band tattoo with spirals and triangular patterns running across the side of a torso on the ribs.

Tribal band tattoo on the side ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black tribal design of curved bands, spirals and triangular motifs runs diagonally across the side of a torso. The linework is bold and solid, with fine hatched and stippled infill in the larger shapes. The tattoo is black and grey on smooth skin against a dark background, with a black garment waistband visible at the bottom of the frame.

Ribs Tribal Spiral Triangle Swirl Band Abstract pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stove has gone out again, and you are kneading bread in the dark with the cook's old knife tucked into your belt, because Hollis says the first loaf of a passage must be shaped before the sun clears the rail. The schooner Marigold rolls under you like a sleeping dog. Past the porthole the swell comes in long bands, and every few minutes a crest breaks white and curls back on itself.

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Hollis watches you work, chewing a stub of pencil. He tells you the islanders who sailed these waters read the sea by its spirals, that where two swells cross the water turns over like a fist opening, and that a boat which keeps that turn on its left shoulder will never be swallowed by it. He draws the shape on the flour with one blunt finger: a long blade, a row of teeth along its edge, a coil at the root where the wave begins to fold.

You press the pattern into the dough with the back of the knife, the way he showed you, and by dawn the crust has split along the lines. The sea is flat as a plate by the time the mate calls for the wheel, and you do not trust it. Ten minutes later the lookout shouts about a reef to starboard, and you are already at the helm with the loaf cooling on the sill behind you, its crust cracked in a long curl that matches the water exactly.