Black and grey tribal tattoo with chevrons, diamonds and spirals wrapping around the upper arm near the elbow.

Tribal band wrapping the upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large bold tribal band covers the upper arm and reaches towards the elbow, built from stacked chevron arrows, a vertical column of solid black panels, diamond lattices and a spiral. The linework is crisp with heavy solid black fills contrasting against the skin, and the design wraps around the arm in a continuous pattern. The photograph is taken from the side against a dark background, with a black sleeve at the top of the frame.

Blackwork Upper arm Tribal Chevron Arrow Spiral Diamond Band Arm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Keep your palm flat on the hull, Tane, and wait. The swell comes under the water like a hand under a blanket, and you feel it long before your eyes will agree. At dusk your eyes will lie to you. The sea never does.

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Old Mere pulled a finger through the wet sand beside the outrigger and drew three stacked arrows, each pointing towards the reef gap. 'Every row is a wave that has already passed beneath the last. Count them and you know how far the next one is behind.' She drew the long black column beside them, two straight lines running down to the water. 'That is the channel. Dark where the reef falls away, pale where it rises to meet you.'

She filled a square of diamonds with her thumbnail, a lattice of small stars she used to count on nights when cloud took the moon. Then she pressed a curl into the sand, tight as a fist, and tapped it. 'The eddy off the point. The current turns back on itself here and swallows any boat whose steersman has stopped listening. Do not look at it. Look at the arrows.'

Next morning Tane pushed off with the tide, palm on the wood, counting the rows under his breath as the lagoon fell away. The swell lifted them once, twice, and he steered for the pointing shape he had learned, not the bright water his eyes wanted. When the reef gap opened ahead, the spiral was behind them, and he had not once looked back to find it.