Colour tattoo of a red-haired cartoon mermaid with a teal tail on a forearm, shown beside a separate teal tail design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cartoon mermaid on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon mermaid with long red hair and a lilac shell top sits on the forearm, one arm outstretched, with her teal tail curling down towards the wrist. The outlines are dark and the shading is smooth and cel-like, with a soft highlight on the hair and tail. The design is shown in bright colour against a pale teal surface, with the tail filling the lower part of the frame.

Forearm Mermaid Cartoon character Tail Shell Long hair Fish scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, love, your legs won't fall off. Right, the mermaid. She came up the steps from the harbour at Scarborough on a wet Tuesday in March, hair the colour of a fox that's been running, and a tail the green of a bottle held up to the sun. Nobody on the platform looked twice, because in those days nobody looked twice at anything that wasn't a timetable. The 7.14 was forty minutes late and Mrs Pargeter was blocking the bench with her kippers.

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She went straight to the ticket hatch and asked Edna for a fare to wherever the trains went furthest. Edna had a rule about seawater on the counter, so the mermaid unclipped a shell from her shoulder, a lilac thing with a rim like a fingernail, and pushed it through the gap. Edna held it up to the lamp and went quiet, the way you do when something is worth more than the price of the ticket. She gave her a single to Carlisle and a pencil stub for good measure.

The mermaid rode that train with her tail across two seats and her hand flat on the window, watching the fields go past like a long grey carpet being unrolled. The guard said it was against regulations. She told him she had heard trains from under the bridge for eleven years and only now understood they were just the sea with wheels. At Carlisle she turned round, bought a return with her last coin, and went home on the 4.50.

Edna still keeps the shell on the ledge behind the hatch. When the wind is off the coast you can hold it to your ear and hear the tide arguing with the rails, and if you listen long enough, the 7.14 comes in on time.