Black and blue tattoo of a winged staff with entwined snakes inside a blue ring, with the words Type 1 Diabetic written below, on the inner forearm.

Winged staff and Type 1 Diabetic on a wrist

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A winged staff with two entwined snakes is outlined in solid black ink and sits inside a bold blue ring. The words Type 1 Diabetic run in a black script beneath the ring, and the shot is taken straight on, showing the skin's surface clearly.

Forearm Staff Snake Wing Ring Script lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Out past the salt flats, where the road forgets its own name, there lived a tinker called Hesper Dunn who carried a staff of pale ash. Two snakes climbed it, and a pair of wings sprouted near the top, because her grandmother had told her that a thing carried far enough grows its own feathers. She mended pans for the settlers and set bones for the drovers, and when the dust came up she rang a blue iron hoop hung from her cart so travellers could find her in the murk.

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One August a boy came walking the road with a message scratched on a slate. His mother had a fever that would not break, and the well had gone sour. Hesper did not ask how far. She took the staff, the hoop and a tin of ground willow bark, and walked through the night with the boy's hand in hers. Each time the snakes seemed to tighten on the wood, she stopped and let them rest, because the old saying went that a serpent held too long will bite its own tail.

At the farm she found the woman on a cot with the shutters closed. Hesper hung the blue ring over the doorway so the lamplight caught it, and the woman's breathing slowed to match its soft swing. She boiled the bark and sat through the long hours, and when dawn came grey over the flats the fever had gone out of the room like a draught through an open door.

The boy paid her with a single brass button and a promise to come back with news. Hesper took the button and nailed the ring to the farm gate, where it still hangs. Travellers say that when the wind blows from the east, the iron hums a little, like a snake settling into its coil.