Two small black fine line tattoos on the inner wrists, a cross-like mark on the left and an arrow-like symbol on the right, shown with hands held together.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two small matching wrist symbols

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

Two wrists are pressed together, each with a small black tattoo on the inner wrist. The left mark is a simple cross-like shape with a short vertical stroke, and the right is an arrow with an angular symbol beside it. The fine, thin lines are sharp on a light skin tone, and the photo is taken in natural light against a brick pavement with a silver chain bracelet on one wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell took the cross because she was the one who could never remember which way the lock gates turned, and Bet took the arrow because she always knew where the water was headed. We were fourteen the summer the Cutting flooded and the bargemen stopped answering their horns, so we made our own language. We pricked the marks into our wrists with a darning needle and a pot of ink stolen from the dye works, and we swore nobody else would learn them.

Keep reading

A cross meant stop. An arrow meant come on. The little angled hook beside it meant the footbridge was out and you should go round by the mill. We practised by pressing our wrists together across the lock beam, feeling each other's marks through the skin, the way you might read a letter in the dark. The canal men thought we were simple. Mr Gaddon, who kept the lower gate, called us the twins and gave us toffee for keeping his tally sheets straight.

In October a boy came up the towpath from the upper mill with a message for Bet's father, and Nell caught him on the steps. He could not read our marks and did not care to. He only wanted to know why the lock was shut, and when we looked at each other we understood that the signs had only ever been for the two of us. Bet crossed her wrist over Nell's, slowly, and the boy waited, shuffling his boots on the wet stone.

Then Nell lifted the paddle herself, and the water came through the gate with a roar that drowned out everything, the boy's questions, Mr Gaddon's shouting, even our own laughing.

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