Colour neo-traditional tattoo on a forearm of a cat wearing a flat cap, round glasses and a bow tie, holding a glass beside stacked books and pink flowers.

Cat in cap and glasses with books on forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cat wearing a flat cap, round glasses and a bow tie sits beside a stack of books, holding a tumbler of amber liquid, with pink flowers behind its shoulder. Bold dark outlines contrast with soft shading on the fur and smooth gradients in the glass and books. Warm browns, pinks and oranges dominate the palette, and script lettering runs across the top edge of the forearm.

Neo-trad Forearm Cat Glasses Bow tie Book Glass Flower Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The salvage crews came up the estuary road in the spring the gulls stopped nesting on the pylons, and by then Felix had kept the books in the drowned tram depot for eleven winters. He wore his brown flat cap indoors and out, and his round spectacles were mended with copper wire by a smith who owed him a favour. Each evening he poured a finger of the amber spirit the orchard women distilled from windfalls, set the tumbler on the atlases, and read aloud to whoever had waded in from the marsh.

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Ines came one wet evening with boots full of silt and asked for the one about the ferryman who rowed the dead to the far bank. Felix had one rule, carved above the door in letters nobody could now read: a book leaves on the understanding that it comes back. She promised on her mother's name and tucked the volume under her coat, and he watched her lantern bob away along the causeway until the dark swallowed it.

The tide took the north wall that winter and the causeway after it. Felix did not go looking. He read to the rats and the herons and the old pump engine, and he kept the ledger open at her name. Then in the second spring, when the hedgerows were foaming with blossom, a flat-bottomed boat nosed up to the depot steps with a wooden box lashed in its bow.

Inside the box lay the ferryman's book, its spine mended with waxed thread, and beneath it a jar of cherries preserved in orchard brandy. A note in careful capitals read: I HAVE READ IT TO THE CHILDREN. THEY ARE WAITING FOR THE SECOND PART. Felix took off his cap, poured two fingers, and opened the book at the page where the ferryman first looks back.