Black and grey fine line tattoo of a face in profile rising from rippled water beside a triangular fin shape, on the inner upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Face rising from water on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A profile of a face emerges from rippled water lines, with a small dark triangular shape beside it on the left. The linework is clean and outlined, with solid black shading along the lower part of the face and the fin. The tattoo sits centrally on the inner upper arm against a wall covered in flash drawings.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ring went over the harbour wall before anyone had finished the vows. Gerald had his thumb on it, then his thumb was on nothing but the sleeve of his good suit, and the ring was turning in the air above the slipway like a coin that had forgotten which way was down. My sister Nell said "Oh" the way she does when the kettle boils dry. Nobody moved. The minister, Mrs Ashdown, looked at the water as though it owed her money.

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I was the one who took my shoes off. The harbour at Porthgwidden is green at the top and black underneath, and the cold went up my arms in slaps. I opened my eyes under the surface and saw the ring first, a small bright wink tumbling down, and then the face. It was a woman's profile, or it looked like one, lifting out of the water with her eyes closed and a ripple at her chin like a collar. Beside her, close enough to touch, a grey fin cut the surface and sank again.

I came up coughing with nothing in my fist. The seal, if that is what it was, had gone, and the face had gone with it. Gerald was white on the slipway. Then the water by the steps broke, and something rolled up onto the weed with the ring pinched in its whiskers, regarding me the way my aunt regards a bill she has decided to pay in full. It dropped the ring on the step beside my bare foot and slid back under.

Nell wore it through the speeches and the rain. Years later she told the story at every christening, always ending the same way: the sea had kept one of us that day and given back the one worth the trouble. She said it mostly to Gerald, who laughed every time, and never once asked her which of them she meant.

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