Black and grey Capricorn sea goat tattoo with curled horns and a scaled fish tail, covering most of the upper back.

Capricorn sea goat across a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A horned goat head with a flowing mane rises above a coiled, scaled fish tail, with wispy fins sweeping across the right side. The linework is dark and smooth, with soft grey shading on the head, mane and scales, and a few small, faint details at the lower left. The design fills the upper back and is shown in a close, straight-on photograph against plain skin.

Realism Back Goat Horn Fish tail Scale Fin Shell

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pass had been shut nine days when the goat came to the shutters of the Hollin Inn. Marit heard it first, a scrape like a wet rope drawn over stone, and then a voice that was not a goat's voice at all, low and patient, asking for the door. Her father put a thumb to his lips and told her to keep the fire low.

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The pedlar was the only guest still awake. He had sold ribbons in the lake towns and knew what came up out of the black water in winter. "It wants salt," he said. "They always want salt. Give it something it can taste and it will go back under." He had a sack of salt-cod he meant to sell in the valley, and he split it open on the flagstones. The smell rolled under the door. The scraping stopped. Something breathed on the frost of the glass, long and slow.

Marit did not like the way the pedlar counted the fish out one by one, or the way he kept his eyes on the window. In the morning the snow had drifted level with the sill. There was no goat. There was a path of grey scales pressed into the white, running from the step down the slope toward the frozen lake, each one as big as a coin and bright at the edge like the inside of a mussel.

On the top step lay a single shell, pale and ridged, with a hole worn through its hinge. Her father picked it up, turned it over, and said nothing. The pedlar had gone before dawn, his sack empty, and the pass was open. Marit kept the shell on the windowsill and did not build the fire up too high after that.