Healed tattoo of a violin resting against its bow on a calf, drawn with dark outlines and soft brown shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Violin and bow on a leg

Calf · Mixed · Photo

A violin and bow are drawn side by side, with the bow angled diagonally across the instrument's neck and body. The violin has dark grey outlines, fine strings and soft shading on its body. The body carries warm reddish-brown tones, and the bow and scroll are rendered in greys against smooth skin.

Calf Bow Music

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the bow in her teeth when the truck pulled off the highway, and she kept it there while the driver leaned across to open the door. The road ran straight through the scrub for forty miles without a bend, and the heat rose off the tarmac in sheets. Her case sat on her knees, its hinges ticking as the metal cooled. She had not played since Tucson.

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He said his name was Cal and that he hauled bottled water to motels on the far side of the pass. He asked what was in the case. She told him it was a violin, and he laughed and said nobody carried a violin out here unless they were running from something. She didn't argue. She lifted the instrument out, its varnish the colour of strong tea where the light from the dashboard caught it, and tightened the bow until the hair sang under her thumb.

At the next petrol station a dog lay under the pump with its tongue out. Cal fetched a folding chair from the back and a bottle of water for her, and she sat in the shade of the canopy and played the slow movement of something her mother had taught her, the bow lifting and falling against the white sky. A woman in a sun-faded dress came out to listen. A boy stopped halfway to the shop with a bag of crisps in his hand.

When she finished, Cal was quiet for a while. Then he said the coast was still a long way off and he'd drive her the whole distance, no charge, if she would play him one more before they left. She looked at the case, then at the bow, and found she already knew which song it would be.