Black tattoo of two mirrored tigers around a central geometric emblem, with curved script above and below, across a man's upper back.

Two tigers and script across a back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows two striped tigers facing each other in mirrored poses, with a central circular emblem and a geometric symbol between them. Rows of curved script in an unfamiliar alphabet arc beneath the tigers and rise up on either side of the centre. Solid black stripes and fine black linework sit on the skin, with no colour ink used.

Back Tiger Emblem Geometric symbol Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The storm came in off the Rae Shoals on the third night of the dark moon, and nine boats were still out past the breakwater. The harbour master sent the bell-boy up to light the lamp, and the women of Hollin Quay stood on the wet stones with their shawls pulled tight, counting hulls against the lamp's glow.

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Old Pim, who had inked the sacred lines for half the men on the quay, was not on the stones. He was aboard the Kestrel Wren, because his grandson Tobin had gone out without asking. Years before, Pim had carved two tigers into the stern planking, nose to nose, so that each one watched the other's back. The fishermen laughed at him for it. Pim only said the wood should guard what was behind it, and that a boat needed something to face.

When the Wren wallowed in the trough, Tobin lost his footing and the rope went slack in his hands. Pim braced his knees against the tiller and felt the old carving under his palm, cold and sodden. He swore he heard breathing in the spray, a low sound like a cat deciding something. The next wave came over the bow and went around the stern instead, as if it had been told where to go.

In the morning all nine boats came in low but whole. The women counted them twice. On the Kestrel Wren's stern the wood was wet and the carved stripes had gone dark with salt, and Tobin, who had never once sat still for Pim's lessons, traced the tigers with one finger and asked his grandfather why they faced each other. Pim pulled his cap down and said that if they faced the sea, the sea would only ever come at them from one side.