Black tribal tattoo running from under the ribs down the side of the waist, with a navel piercing and low-rise denim visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal tattoo down the side and waist

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tribal design with thick, sweeping blackwork lines and spiky curls runs vertically from beneath the ribcage towards the hip. The linework is solid black with no visible shading, and the design tapers as it reaches the waistband of the jeans. The photograph is a close crop of a bare midriff with a plain background, and the skin tone is warm and even.

Ribs Tribal Swirl Curl Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the snow took the lower road again on Tuesday, so I have been walking the ridge with Father's old crowbar and the goat-bell round my neck. You asked in your last letter whether the thorn hedge by the chapel still grows wild. It does. It has crept up the wall as far as the first switchback, and its black curls show against the white like ink spilt on a sheet.

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Mr Aubrey from the survey office came up in October with his rolled plans and his theodolite on three legs. He wanted the pass marked straight, a clean line from the valley to the saddle. I told him the mountain does not take straight lines. Water turns, sheep turn, and the wind goes round the crag twice before it decides to go over. He laughed and said the road would be drawn by men in Lyon who had never seen snow. Then he unrolled the plan on the chapel step, the wind took one corner, and we spent an hour chasing it down the slope, the paper twisting like a live thing.

Here is what I have been doing since. Every thaw I follow the drifts and mark where the meltwater splits and runs downhill in threads. Where three threads meet I build a cairn. I have counted nineteen from the saddle to the bridge. If you drew them on a page and joined them up, you would get a shape like the ironwork on the old hospice gate, a curl and a spike and a curl again, narrowing as it reaches the stream, where the water finally goes quiet.

Come home in spring if you can. Bring nothing but boots. I will show you the last cairn, the one nearest the stream, which I have left unfinished on purpose. I want you to set the final stone, so the mountain knows there are two of us keeping its paths.