Black fine line tattoo of a vertical column of stacked abstract symbols running along the inner forearm, with a tabby cat resting its head near the wrist.

Vertical line of stacked symbols on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of stacked abstract symbols, including loops, circles, small dashes and a crosshair-like mark at the base, runs along the inner forearm. The linework is thin and even, in black ink with no shading. The tattoo is shown in a casual home photo, with a tabby cat's head partly covering the wrist and a red rug in the background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had already taken the lower stakes by the time I reached Scarrow Point, so I read the wall from the bottom, as Father taught us: the crosshair first, the fixed datum that never moves, then the short dashes, then the loops climbing like a ladder someone had drawn in a hurry. Mr Haddon from the harbour board says they are masons' marks, one for each course laid, and that the coping stones were numbered in the same hand. He is probably right. Still, I counted the loops against the tide tables and they match the high waters of every spring since 1841, one ring for each flood that reached the top of the wall and no further.

Keep reading

While we were digging beside the column we found a bottle wrapped in oilcloth, and inside it a single sheet with the same symbols copied in pencil, and beneath them a date and two initials I did not recognise. The last mark on the sheet was not a loop but an open circle, left unfinished, as though the hand had stopped there on purpose or been called away from the wall.

I have decided not to tell Haddon about the bottle. He would only want it for the museum, and I think whoever kept that tally wanted it kept by the water. I have put it back under the crosshair, wrapped as we found it, and drawn the open circle in my own notebook so the record is complete. The next spring tide is on Thursday, and I will be there to see whether it reaches the top.

Tell Mother I am eating properly. Tell her the lighthouse keeper's wife sends her regards, though I have not met her yet.

Ada

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