Small fine line tattoo of a scallop shell in black ink on the inner forearm, near the elbow.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line scallop shell on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small outline of a scallop shell with radiating ribs, drawn in single-weight black linework. The shell sits on pale skin on the inner arm, with the fan of ribs opening upward and a short hinge point at the base. The image is a close, plain photograph with a soft blurred background and no shading or colour.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mari's father had walked to Santiago once and come home with a scallop shell sewn to his hat, and he never took it off, not even to sleep. When the tide went out past the rocks at Skerrow, he sent her down the wet sand with a basket and a knife, and told her to take only the shells that had been opened and emptied, because the living ones were the sea's business.

Keep reading

She found a shell that was whole, its ribs clean and fanned like the pleats of a skirt somebody had folded with care. Its hinge was small and neat. She carried it up the cliff path in her apron pocket and did not tell him, because she had decided the sea was not owed anything from her that day.

That night the wind came off the water hard, and the boats did not go out. Her father sat by the fire with his hat on his knee, turning the sewn shell over and over. When she finally confessed, he didn't scold her. He asked to see the shell, and she gave it to him, and he held it up to the lamp so the ribs threw thin shadows across the table.

"Every line of that goes to the same point," he said. "Whatever you do, the rays still meet at the hinge. Take it back down in the morning and leave it where you found it, and tell the sea I said thank you."

She went down at low water. The shell was lying where she had left the empty ones, and she set it on the sand with the open fan facing the sky.

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