Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two hands linking little fingers

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A single-line drawing of two hands hooked together by their little fingers, with the fingers and knuckles outlined in black. The linework is thin and even, with small solid shapes marking the nails and a few shadow areas. The subject is centred on a plain cream background with generous empty space around it.

Fine line Hand Outline Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the abbey roof has finally stopped leaking, though Brother Anselm says it was the prayers and not the new lead sheeting, and I am too tired to argue with him over supper. You asked in your last letter whether the cold ever gets into the copying room. It does. My fingers stiffen around the quill by the third hour, and yesterday I wrote a whole line of the Psalter with a blot on every second word, so the Prior sent me out to fetch kindling instead.

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But I have something to tell you that is not about the cold. On the feast of Saint Brendan the old gardener came to the gate with his grandson, a boy of about six with a bandaged thumb, asking whether the brothers would bless a pair of ropes he had tied to keep the goats from the herb beds. The boy would not let go of his grandfather's hand, and when the gardener turned to speak to Brother Anselm, the child hooked his little finger round his grandfather's and held on, very solemn, as if they were making a contract with God Himself. I thought it the most sensible thing I had seen all winter.

I keep thinking of it when I can barely hold my pen. Perhaps that is all the faith we need, two people agreeing to stay near each other, hands hooked together in the crowd. Pray for my writing hand, and for the goats. Your brother in Christ, Edmund.