Black and grey dolphin tattoo with splashing waves on the outer thigh, in a Japanese-inspired style.

Dolphin and waves on the thigh

Japanese · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A dolphin leaps upwards, its tail fin at the top, with stylised splashing waves curling around its body and below it. The body is filled with fine crosshatched lines and soft grey shading, while the bold outline and wave shapes are solid black. The tattoo sits on the side of a thigh against a dark top, with plain warm lighting and a simple background.

Japanese Thigh Dolphin Wave Sea Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The trough had frozen again overnight, so you broke the skin of ice with the back of the spade while the ewes shoved at each other behind you, breath steaming in the grey light. Uncle Dafydd had said the flood would reach the lower meadow by the weekend. It had come sooner, a dull sheet laid across the stubble, the wind combing it into ridges that looked almost like the sea.

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Nan used to tell you about the sea. She had gone to Weston once on a charabanc, and she swore a dolphin had kept pace with the pier boat for a mile, flicking up out of the swell as if it were showing off. You never believed her. Nobody raised on a farm trusts anything that cannot be fed, sheared or sold, and you had said so at tea more than once.

On Thursday the water rose past the top hedge and you walked the gate line with your boots full. Out past the drowned fence a single grey bow came up, rolled once in the pale light, and slid under. The wind lifted a crest off the ridges and flung it at the sky, and you stood there with the spade on your shoulder until your fingers went white and stiff.

Back in the kitchen Nan was at the table with her cardigan buttoned wrong, reading the paper upside down. You told her. She didn't look up. "Told you," she said, and reached for the teapot, though you could see the grin working at the corner of her mouth before she hid it in her cup.