Four solid black bat silhouette designs stacked vertically on a white background, each with distressed, cracked white speckling across the wings.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four bat silhouette designs

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows four bat silhouettes arranged one above another on a white background. Each bat has outstretched wings, a pointed head and a central body, filled with solid black ink. Small white cracks and speckles break up the black across the wings, and the four variations differ mainly in wing shape and edge detail.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The stencils came off the crate this morning looking nothing like the drawings. Four bats, one above the other, cut from oiled card by old Mr Pryce before he went to his sister's in Penzance. Every wing has been broken on purpose, a fine web of white where the ink refuses to take, so the boats will look as if they've flown through a storm and come out the other side. Harbour men like that sort of thing. They trust a thing that has been weathered.

I spent the whole afternoon on the Mary Lowe with a stiff brush and a tin of tar-black, dabbing through the card and praying it hadn't warped in the damp. The first bat bled at the left tip. The second came out clean, and I swear it looked back at me from the transom as if it knew I'd nearly ruined the first. Tom from the chandlery said I should have left the cracks to chance. I told him the cracks were the whole point. He laughed and said that's what makes a good forgery.

Maybe I'll tell you the truth when you're home. The fourth one is the one I'm proudest of. I let the brush run dry on the last wing, and the white came through in a shape like the coast from Mevagissey round to the point. I didn't mean it. Nobody on the quay has noticed yet.

Your loving, Nell

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