Black fine-line tattoo of a world map outline and latitude and longitude coordinates in script on the inner forearm, beside a wristwatch with a vintage map face.

World map outline and coordinates on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A fine-line tattoo in black ink runs down the inner forearm. It shows an outline of continents, drawn with thin single lines, above a column of italic script listing latitude and longitude coordinates. A gold wristwatch with a vintage map dial and a floral sleeve appear in the frame, and the soft shading of the background is plain.

Fine line Lettering Forearm World map Continent Coordinates Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The mule train came through the pass at dawn, twelve animals and a boy who sang the whole way up, and I have stopped pretending I can sleep. Mr Haldane has the instruments set out on the flat stone by the cairn. He lets me hold the chain now, which he would not have done in March. The figures he keeps in his oilcloth book are the ones we copied off the survey sheet, and I have written them out again so you can check my hand against his: thirty-nine north, a hundred and five and a half west. He says the numbers under his breath like a prayer.

Something about the map has shifted in me since you left. Papa's atlas used to show the whole world flattened into a pale green sheet, and I believed the coastlines were fixed like the edge of a table. Up here the land folds back on itself every hour. Haldane says the continents are only the parts the sea has not yet swallowed, and that a surveyor is someone who agrees to be wrong slightly less often than the others.

We reach the summit tomorrow if the cloud holds off. I am taking the small brass compass you gave me, the one with the cracked glass, because it still points north even when it has lost patience with everything else.

Write back to the station at Cañon City. If you do not hear from me by midsummer, assume the pass has kept something of mine, and go and find it on the map.

Your sister, Ada