Two people hold hands, showing full colour tattoo sleeves on their forearms and upper arms, with a dragon-style design on the woman's right arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Colourful tattoo sleeves on two clasped arms

Japanese · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A close shot of two people holding hands, with their arms and torsos cropped out of frame so that no faces are visible. The woman's right arm carries a full sleeve of bold, multicoloured designs including a dragon-like figure and pink flowers, while the man's left arm shows green, purple and yellow tattooed imagery. The clean, bright colours sit against a white shirt, brown trousers and a white dress, with the clasped hands at the centre of the composition.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Wren, the vats at Halsey's Mill have turned the whole yard the colour of a fox, and I have stopped pretending I can keep the dragon out of my sleep. You asked why I would not paint it on the new hangings. I will tell you now, since you have been so patient with me.

Keep reading

Two summers ago a boy named Tobiah came up from the coast with a bundle of raw silk and a stubborn jaw. He wanted the Lantern Night banners done in the old green and gold, and I told him no. I would dye them the pink of the peonies along the weir wall, and he could take his gold to the chapel. We argued across three days of steam. On the fourth he unrolled a drawing of a dragon coiled round a river, and I saw that the river was turning back on itself, the way the weir does in spring when the water can't decide where to go.

We shook on it over the blue vat, our fingers red to the knuckle, and neither of us let go until the cloth had drunk the colour through. His grip was rough from the rope work at the wharf and mine was no gentler, and the dye ran down both our wrists into the sleeves of our coats. Afterwards he laughed and said we would both be wearing the river for a month.

The banners went up on Lantern Night, pink and green, with the dragon stitched along the hem. When the wind takes them the river seems to swim, and I stand under it with my hands in my apron, the stain still there in the creases. Come in May and I will show you.

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