Colour tattoo of an animated couple kissing inside an ornate gold frame decorated with shells and starfish, on the upper arm, in a traditional-style cartoon finish.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Animated couple kissing in a shell frame on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a young man with short dark hair and a woman with long red hair leaning in for a kiss, set inside an ornate gold frame decorated with shells, starfish and scrollwork. The linework is bold and outlined, with soft shading on the faces, hair and frame. Blue and teal tones fill the background behind the couple, and the photo is shown as two near-identical views of the upper arm.

Neo-trad Upper arm Couple Kiss Frame Shell Starfish Red hair Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You arrive at Gull Wrack Boarding House in March, when the sea is the colour of slate, and Mrs Pellow shows you up the stairs past a gilt-framed picture she tells you not to touch. Inside the frame a dark-haired lad leans toward a girl whose red hair spills over his shoulder, their faces so close they must be sharing one breath. A conch and a starfish sit in the carved corners like pins on a lapel. The paint has gone soft at the edges, as if it has been kept in a damp room for a hundred years.

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At supper Mrs Pellow tells the story she tells every lodger. The picture came off a wrecked trawler and was bought at a jumble sale in Penzance. The two in it were a miller's son and a girl who sang to the gulls off the Ness, and the miller's wife never forgave either of them. You laugh and reach for the salt, and she does not laugh with you.

That night the tide comes up the cove further than it should, and you hear someone humming through the floorboards. In the morning the picture has been turned to face the wall. Caught in the hinge of the frame is a single wet strand of red hair, cold as weed. You lift the frame off its nail, and the lovers have moved while you were asleep. The girl is looking out now, past the lad's shoulder, straight at you, and she looks impatient.

You hang it back facing the room. By the next morning a thin salt line has crept round the gilt, and the starfish in the corner is gone. In the guest book, under purpose of visit, you write returning.