Two small black fine line crosses, one on each inner wrist, with black nails and a silver sequin accent nail visible above.

Two small crosses on the inner wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two small, identical black crosses sit on the inner wrists of two hands that are turned palm up. The linework is thin and the ink is solid black with no visible shading. The photograph is a close, casual shot taken indoors against a plain beige carpet, with the tattoos centred in the frame.

Fine line Forearm Cross Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crossing at Scarrow Sound had two ferrymen for as long as anyone could remember, and the islanders never asked which was the elder, because the answer shifted with the tides. Tobiah Wren and Amos Lark had pulled the same oars since they were boys, and when the chapel bell cracked the winter they turned sixteen, they walked to Mrs Penhallow's cottage and paid her a loaf and a jar of plum jam to prick soot into their skin with a darning needle.

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She inked a small cross on the inside of each wrist, the upright as thin as a mast and the crossbar no wider than a thumb. 'So the sea knows you're spoken for,' she said, wiping the needle on her apron. Tobiah swore it was only a sailor's charm. Amos said it was a promise, and the two of them argued about that for forty years without once letting the argument reach the boat.

The fog came down on a Tuesday in October, with a child's cry drifting from the far shore. Tobiah took the bow and Amos the stern, and the lantern swung between them. Halfway across the rope snapped and the boat slewed toward the Teeth, the black rocks that had taken the Haskin boy. Tobiah leaned out over the gunwale with his wrist stretched wide, and Amos caught it, and the two marks met in the lamplight like a pair of keys turning one lock.

They brought the child in alive. Afterwards both men wore long sleeves in chapel and short ones on the water, and when the children asked why, the old women said the sea only trusts a promise it can see twice.