Black and grey elephant head tattoo with trailing vines and flowers on an upper arm, with a shaded ornamental pendant on its forehead.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Elephant head with vines on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large elephant head faces forward, with its trunk curling down the centre of the design and its ears spread wide. The linework is fine and sketchy, with soft grey shading on the head, ears and tusks, and thin vines, leaves and small flowers wrap around the outline. The design is entirely black and grey and fills the upper arm and shoulder area.

Botanical Upper arm Elephant Vine Flower Leaves Pendant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pell had signed for the crate at seven, and by half past nine the goods yard smelled of hay and hot oil. The elephant stood in the siding with her head lowered, as if the platform lamps were too bright for her. Her keeper, a thin man called Abel Turr, kept one hand flat on her shoulder and talked to her in a language Pell didn't know.

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"She won't go up the ramp without the bell," Turr said. "Bell's in the van. Van's in Peterborough."

Pell looked at the brass pendant hanging on a chain across the elephant's forehead, the only bright thing about her. "Then she goes without it," he said, and felt the grey air of the platform press on him. The stationmaster would want the siding cleared before the milk train.

It took an hour. They coaxed her with apples from the buffet and a bucket of water, and at last she lifted her trunk, curled it round the iron rail of the footbridge as if testing it, and stepped onto the wooden ramp with the care of someone entering a church. Ivy had grown up the old pillars, and she reached for a leaf, pulled it free, and tucked it behind one ear.

When the wagon doors slid shut, Turr pressed a ticket into Pell's palm. Third class, one elephant, destination left blank. "Keep it," he said. "She'll want it back someday." Pell folded it into his waistcoat pocket and listened to the train pull away into the dark, the pendant's small chime lost in the rattle of the rails.