Realistic colour tattoo of Captain America's shield on the forearm, with a white star at the centre and torn edges revealing skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Captain America shield on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A realistic tattoo of Captain America's shield sits on the forearm, with a white five-pointed star at the centre of a blue field. Red and white rings surround the star, and the outer edges appear torn away to show skin beneath. Smooth shading gives the shield a dimensional, metallic look against a dark grey background.

Realism Forearm Shield Star Superhero Torn skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The shield came up the shaft in a skip of spoil on a Tuesday, and the lamp man found it face down at the three-hundred-foot landing, its red and white rings still bright under the coal dust. Nobody in Caerdu had seen a shield that wasn't made of tin, and by dinner half the row had come to look at it. Mrs Ellery called it a sign. Our Gethin called it a bin lid. My father, who had worked that shaft for thirty-one years, turned it over in his hands and said the metal was too light to be iron and too cold to be anything else.

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I took it home to clean. Under the grime the blue at the centre was the colour of a kingfisher's back, and the white star stood up from it as if someone had pressed a coin into wet clay. The rim was torn all round, but when I scrubbed at it with vinegar for three nights I saw the tears were too neat. They were scallops, the kind a cutter makes when he means to hang a thing on a wall, not the kind a fall makes.

Gethin wanted it for his own arm. He said a shield like that could stop a roof fall, and he strapped it under his jacket and went down the next shift like a knight going to the wars. Nobody argued. Men at Caerdu had always wanted something to put between themselves and the dark, and a shield was as good as a hymn or a bottle.

When the east face came in a fortnight later, Gethin walked out of it with a cut on his forearm and a grin. He held the shield up to the lamp so we could all see it. It was scratched, nothing more. I still have it on the mantel, and the star still catches the firelight when the room goes quiet. Gethin never got a mark he couldn't laugh off after that, and when they buried him I was the one who wiped the dust from the star before the lid went on.