Two black and grey fine line tattoos: a world map outline on the inside of a wrist over passport stamp paper, and a small antler on the back of a neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

World map on a wrist and antler on a neck

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The left photo shows a fine line outline of a world map on the inner wrist, set against a background of passport stamp pages. The right photo, in black and white, shows the back of a woman's neck with her hair in a bun, and a small antler tattoo sits just below the hairline. Both tattoos are in black ink with thin, single-weight linework.

Fine line Forearm Neck World map Antler Stag

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down by the runner beans and keep still, because this is the story my grandmother told me under the damson tree, and she never once told it wrong. There was a stag who lived in the hedge at the bottom of Hollins Lane, and he grew tired of seeing the same three fields every morning. So he went to the post office in Thornbury and asked the postmistress for a stamp for every border he could cross.

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She was a sharp old thing and charged him three autumns of acorns for the privilege. Each time he crossed a line, she pressed a stamp onto his flank, the ink cool and smelling of rubber and rain. Rivers ran down one side of him, mountains climbed the other, and the salt flats of some country he never could pronounce settled across his shoulder. By the time he had finished, he could hardly fit through the gate.

Coming home was harder than leaving. The hedge had been grubbed out for a new road, and the postmistress had retired to the coast with her stamps wrapped in a tea towel. The stag stood in the lane for a long time, turning slowly, reading himself the way a traveller reads a letter from a place he has forgotten. Then he walked into the first garden he found, lay down under the damson tree, and let the bees come and read him too.

So when you see a stag in a garden, don't go shooing him off. He is only checking that the map is still correct. Now hand me those beans, and mind the damson, it drops its stones on anyone not paying attention.