Black ink outline of a dolphin in loose, sketchy strokes on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dolphin outline on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink outline of a dolphin curves across the skin, with a tail fluke at the top and a small dot for the eye. The linework is bold, tapered and sketch-like, with open gaps in places rather than solid shading. The ink is set against pale, softly lit skin in a black and white photograph, with the shoulder edge visible at the lower right.

Back Dolphin Tail Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fishmonger's daughter had sold every sprat by the time the rain came off the estuary, but she stayed under the iron awning of Gull Lane market because her mother had said a sea-wife should never leave a bargain unfinished. The stalls ran with water. Men shouted their prices through it like gulls.

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A dolphin came up the slipway that morning, or so the carters swore, and lay in the gutter by the eel barrels with its tail bent back over its head. Nobody wanted to touch it. The dark sleek back was slick with rain and its one eye was open and wet. Old Mr Penrose said it had come for a debt. Mrs Hale said it had lost its pod in the storm off the point.

The girl knelt down anyway. She had a bucket of brine and a sharp knife for scaling, and she worked the bent tail straight with both hands, slowly, the way you untangle a net. When she let go, the creature rolled, flexed once and slid under the stall into the grey drain water, and from there out to the harbour where the rain closed over it.

The market still smelled of fish. Penrose paid her a shilling for the eels he'd missed. She never told him that the drain had gone to the sea, or that the dolphin had looked back at her before it went, with the patience of something that keeps accounts.