Two small yellow star tattoos with black outlines and dark tails, one on a finger of each hand, resting on a wooden table.

Two small star tattoos on fingers

Fine line · Hand · Colour · Photo

Two hands rest on a wooden table with fingers spread, and each shows one small star tattoo on a finger. The stars have a yellow filled body, a thin dark outline and a short dark wisp trailing from one point, suggesting a comet or shooting star. The linework is simple and clean, the image is warm toned, and the tattoos are small and set off-centre in the frame.

Fine line Hand Star Finger

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Wren,

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The river has gone to glass below Sonning, and the Mary Ellen is tied up under the willows where you said she would be happiest. Dad keeps the stove lit and pretends he is not counting the days until the thaw. I have been sleeping on the cabin roof with the cat, because the air off the water is cleaner up there, and because I wanted to see whether the sky still does that thing you used to describe, where the stars come loose and fall sideways.

Last Thursday one did. A bright one with a tail like a struck match, going over the lock gates so fast that I said your name out loud before I had thought it. Nobody heard except the heron. I drew it in biro on the back of a tide-table afterwards, and then I walked up to Fore Street, where Mr Okafor at the chandlery keeps his needles in a tin that used to hold Quality Street. He had time for two small ones. He did them on the Saturday while the kettle sang, a yellow star with a dark wisp trailing off one point, and he would not let me pay for the second because, he said, a comet is always half a gift.

I have been turning my hand over all week, watching the light move across the water and the little star catch it. Dad saw me doing it at breakfast and didn't say anything, which for Dad is a speech. Your one is on the finger that never held a windlass, so you will find it easy to forget, and I have told him to remind you. The wisp on mine points back along the hull towards the cabin, which I think is the right way round for something you are sending home.

Come up when the ice goes. The cat misses you, and so does the heron.

Love, Ruth