Black script lettering reading dance magic dance, ending in a small cartoon creature with blue flame-like details, tattooed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Dance magic dance script with a creature

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

Fine black script lettering reads dance magic dance across the upper back, with a looping flourish at the start of the word magic. At the right end a small cartoon creature with a rounded head and segmented body has pale blue flame-like accents. The linework is clean and even on pale skin, with no shading, and the composition runs horizontally along the shoulder blade.

Lettering Back Script Creature Flame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Morwenna had nothing to trade but salt-cured herring and a wheel of bad cheese when the Kestrel ran short of lamp oil that November. The harbour master said the lamps would stay dark until the spring boats came in, so she went down to the sea wall after the tide and sat with her boots in the wet weed, saying the words her gran had taught her for calling things up out of the dark.

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The thing that came was no bigger than a thumb. It had a round head, lit at the crown with a blue flame like a wick someone had just breathed on, and a body of joined rings that clicked when it moved. It looked at her the way a gull looks at a chip. "You're asking for oil," it said. "Everyone asks for oil."

She told it about the Kestrel, the seven men aboard, and the boy Tam who could not yet swim. The creature listened with its head on one side, then said the only price it wanted was a tune, for it had been a long time since anyone danced for it. So Morwenna stood on the cold stones and played the old reel with her teeth and her two hands, stamping time, and when she stopped the creature had doubled in length and its flame burned as high as a rushlight.

"Take the oil," it said, "and tell them the lamps are lit by a dancer, not a debt."

In spring the Kestrel came home and every lamp in the harbour was full. Nobody could say who had filled them, but Tam swore he had seen a small blue light go curling along the quay wall, keeping time with the lap of the water.