Black and grey traditional style tattoo of a dragon head and a serpent coiled around a dagger on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragon and serpent around a dagger on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A dragon head sits at the top left of a dagger, with its body and a serpent wrapping around the hilt and blade. The linework is bold and the shading is smooth black and grey, with highlights on the metal and scales. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against dark, plain skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your letter came in on the Tuesday boat, smelling of tar and the wet sacking it was carried in, and I have read it four times standing at the back step while the gulls fought over the fish boxes. You asked after the dagger. It is still in the drawer under the tide tables, wrapped in Mother's oilcloth, exactly where you left it.

Keep reading

Father made it the winter the Sorrel went down off the Lizard. Josiah Penhale brought him a broken anchor chain and a debt he could not pay in coin, and Father forged the blade from the chain's last good link. He worked a serpent up the steel, coil over coil, and set a dragon's head at the crossguard with its jaws open over the grip. When Penhale asked why a dragon, Father only said the snake was for patience and the dragon was for the sea, which takes what it likes. Penhale never came back for the dagger. He sailed for Newfoundland that spring and nobody has heard from him since.

I took it out last night and rubbed the scales with a little oil, and the grey shading came up under the lamp like something breathing. I have decided to send it to you. The carrier takes parcels for the Falmouth packet on Thursday, so I have wrapped it in the oilcloth and tied it with your old sailing twine. Keep the point away from your palm, and if you find Penhale's name in any ship's book down there, write and tell me the day.

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