Colour tattoo of a blue sea serpent with green horns and an orange fish among green seaweed, in a Japanese-inspired style, on a calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue sea serpent and orange fish on a calf

Japanese · Calf · Colour · Photo

A blue serpentine sea creature with green horns and an open red mouth dominates the design, with an orange fish with large eyes below it and green seaweed filling the background. The bold black outlines, smooth colour fills and soft shading give it a traditional Japanese-influenced look across three angled photographs of the same leg. Colour ink dominates, with blue, green, orange and red throughout.

Japanese Neo-trad Calf Fish Seaweed Horn Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Priya,

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I've been meaning to write since the reunion, though you'll have guessed that from the way I left the hall without saying goodbye to Mr Hallam. I walked down to the breakwater instead, where the weed grows thick over the lower steps and the tide keeps its own timetable. I was thinking about the afternoon in Year Nine when Dennis Okafor put his goldfish in the school pond to prove it could live anywhere. It did not, and the whole class stood there laughing at its goggling eyes.

Nobody laughed at the thing I found in the weed that evening. It was a serpent, or it had been one for a long time, blue as a cold harbour with horns the green of old copper, and its mouth was open wide enough to swallow the bait shop sign. It wasn't looking at me. It was looking past me, down the steps, at a small orange fish with eyes like two coins, flapping in a rock pool and shouting its outrage at nobody. I recognised the fish. It was Dennis's goldfish, grown into something with more nerve than sense, and I understood why it had been so cross all these years.

I sat on the bottom step with my shoes getting soaked and told them both about the reunion: who had gone grey, who had kept their accent, who had asked after you and said nothing about me. The serpent yawned, which seemed fair. The fish stopped shouting. By the time the tide turned, the three of us had reached an arrangement I won't put in writing.

Come home at Easter. Bring the jam jar. I'll show you the steps, and you can judge for yourself whether the big one is listening.

Love, Hannah