Watercolour style tattoo of a grinning Cheshire Cat with green eyes above a hot air balloon basket, on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cheshire Cat and hot air balloon on a calf

Calf · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows the Cheshire Cat's face with a wide toothy grin and bright green eyes, with its ears and head fading into a loose wash of pink, purple and blue. Below the face, a thin black outline forms the ropes and basket of a hot air balloon, which merges into the watercolour background. The soft colour blends and splashes are set against a brick wall, with the leg filling most of the frame.

Calf Cheshire cat Cat Grin Eye Hot air balloon Basket

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The balloon came down over the Bramley rows just after the wasps had given up for the afternoon, its basket snagging on the top wire of the third fence like a kite on a hedge. Dad said to leave it be. Mum said somebody would have to go up and see if the pilot was breathing, and since I was the only one not holding a fruit crate, that somebody was me.

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The envelope was billowing out of the trees in great washes of pink and violet, faded where the sun had got at it, and across the front a face was grinning down at me with green eyes the colour of unripe Discovery apples. Nobody was in the basket. There was only a stub of pencil and a teacup balanced on the wicker lip, still warm when I touched it, and a voice somewhere above the leaves asking whether I had seen which way the orchard turned.

I told it the orchard did not turn. It had been planted in straight lines by my grandfather, who did not believe in curves, and the only thing that wandered through it was the wind. The grin widened. Patches of the envelope split and ran like watercolour in a shower, and the voice laughed in the way of someone who had been keeping a secret for a very long time.

When I looked up again the balloon had risen clear of the trees, bright as a boiled sweet, and the basket was empty except for one apple, bitten in a neat crescent. I still have it on the windowsill. It has not gone brown. Some evenings, when the light comes in low across the rows, I swear it is grinning.