Close view of a white dotted tattoo running up the forearm and across the back of the hand, with the fingers tucked into a grey jeans pocket.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

White dotted pattern on forearm and hand

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person's forearm and hand are shown with small white dots forming a vertical line along the forearm and a scattered trail across the back of the hand towards the thumb. The dots are solid white ink with no outlines or shading, and the skin is light. The hand rests in a jeans pocket beside a brown belt and a blue top, with a silver ring and red nail polish in the frame.

Dotwork Forearm Hand Dot Dotted line Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marit, the navigation charts came back from the relay station this morning, and they are wrong in the way you always said they would be. The coast of the old Orkney reef has shifted again, forty metres east, and the beacon you set in the spring is sitting on dry shingle now. I stood on the gantry for an hour trying to decide whether to tell the council or simply to laugh.

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I have been dotting the route on my arm the way you taught me, one white point for each waypoint, so that the pattern runs from the wrist up to the elbow like a line of buoys. Last night I added three more across the back of my hand, all the way to the thumb, because the new channel bends sharply past the old lighthouse and I did not trust my memory. The ink is cold and it does not smudge in the sea spray, which is more than I can say for the paper maps.

The ring you left in the drawer of the harbour office is still there. I keep meaning to send it back, but it fits my ring finger better than it ever fitted yours, and I have stopped pretending otherwise. When the tide turns on Thursday I will take the skiff out past the new shingle and see whether the dots still match the water.

If I do not write again by the weekend, check the third buoy. I marked it with the brightest point on my hand, the one nearest the thumb, and if the ink is still there on the chart, I was right about the channel.