Colour tattoo on a calf of a bare leg in a bath, showing a cartoon creature in an ornate oval frame with pink roses, a pink bow and lettering in neo-traditional style.

Cartoon creature and roses on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A cartoon creature with large dark eyes and pale ears sits upside down inside an ornate oval frame, with pink roses and green leaves above and a pink bow below. Lettering curves around the frame, and the bold outlines are combined with soft shading in the face and bow. The pastel pink, teal and brown colours sit against pale skin, with a bathtub filling the background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The Gaiety let the old flyman go on Tuesday, so the rigging is quiet and I've taken to climbing up after the second house with a flask of tea. Our bat is still hanging from the batten above the proscenium, where he has hung since the Christmas pantomime. The wardrobe girls named him Mr Thimble, because he came down in a tin of brass buttons and never once asked for them back. He sleeps the right way up for nobody. He prefers the world turned over, he would say, if he could say anything, since that is the only honest way to see a stage.

Harrow, the new deputy, wants him gone. He says bats in the flies bring the wrong sort of luck and that the house has never been right since the fire. Last night he hauled on the lines himself, cursing the sandbags, and I stood in the wings and said nothing, because I have grown fond of the creature. He has big dark eyes that never blink at the lamps and a pale ear he tips toward whoever is talking, as though weighing every word.

When the curtain came down, Harrow looked up at the batten, and for once Mr Thimble unfolded his wings and dropped, slow as a feather, past the gas lamp and into the dark over the orchestra pit. Harrow ducked. Somebody laughed in the empty stalls.

This morning I found a pink rose pinned to the rigging beneath his perch, and a card in Harrow's cramped hand that said only: cast your judgements. I have decided to cast mine, and mine is that he stays.

Love, Bess

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