Black and white photo of a fine line tattoo of two simple faces with closed eyes and small mouths on the upper arm, below a dark sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two minimalist faces on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two minimalist faces side by side, each drawn with a single continuous line for the closed eyes, nose and small mouth. The linework is thin and even with no shading, so the design relies on negative space. The photograph is black and white against a brick wall, with the tattoo placed just above the elbow below the edge of a dark sleeve.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer to the fire, and mind the cat, for this is a story told only once a winter, when the wind comes off the Fens and the bells freeze in their frames. There were two brothers at Saint Ebba's, Anselm and Tobiah, who had taken the silence together on the same wet morning and had never once broken it. They sat across from each other in the cloister every evening with their eyes shut, and the abbot said that was devotion. The other monks said it was a wager, and that whoever opened his eyes first would owe the other a loaf of brown bread every Sunday until Lent.

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Nobody knew how long they had been sitting like that. The novices swore Anselm's beard had gone grey in a single summer. Tobiah's ankles swelled, and still he did not look. The abbot tried sending in a visitor to cough loudly, and the visitor was carried back out with a bruised shin and a look of great disappointment.

On the last night of the year, the snow came down so thick that the lamps went out one by one, and in the dark Brother Tobiah reached for a stick of charcoal from the hearth. With his eyes still closed, he drew two faces on the flagstone between their knees, each with a single line for its shut eyes, a small line for its nose, and a mouth pressed firm against the cold. Anselm felt the scratch of it and said nothing.

When the bell rang for matins, the novices found the two of them still sitting, the charcoal faces still there, and neither brother had ever opened his eyes. The abbot counted the loaves for a year afterwards and never once found a debt owed to anyone.

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