Colour tattoo of an anime girl in a red top with brown bob hair, beside three black-outlined soot sprites, on a forearm.

Anime girl and soot sprites on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large coloured portrait of an anime-style girl with a brown bob and a red top fills the forearm, shown in three-quarter view with a slightly sad expression. Three black-outlined round sprites with large eyes sit above her on the upper arm, and soft blue and white shading sits behind the figure. Clean linework and smooth cel-style shading give a crisp, even finish against the skin.

Forearm Girl Soot sprite Bob haircut Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The coal bunker has been restless since Lowestoft, and you know it because the soot comes up through the deck grating before the cook does. You are fourteen, the only girl the skipper would take on the Mary Ellen, and your red jersey hangs past your knuckles with the sleeves rolled twice. Nobody warned you the bunker had tenants. Three of them sit on the lip of the hatch now, round as conkers, black fuzz bristling, eyes wide and wet as mussels. They do not speak. They only watch the galley door, where the tea kettle sings.

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You learned their habit in the first week. Put a crust of bread on the hatch and they go quiet and tidy, rolling in a line toward it like marbles down a slope. Tonight there is no bread. There is only the last tin of condensed milk and your own dinner, a heel of loaf and a fish head you were going to throw overboard. The skipper's voice carries down the companionway, asking whether the fleet is still in sight, and you realise the sprites have stopped rolling. They are looking at the sea through the porthole, where the lamps of the other boats have gone out one by one.

You fill the tin lid with what you have and set it on the hatch. The sprites come slowly, then all at once, a soft black tumble that smells of cold ash and pennies. They eat without chewing. When the lid is clean, they climb into the cuff of your sleeve as if it were a dry cave, and you carry them up on deck through the first grey light. Off the harbour wall a gull lifts, and the wind swings the Mary Ellen's bow toward home. The sprites settle against your wrist, warm as a kettle, and by the time the mooring rope hits the quay they have fallen asleep.