Four small watercolour-style silhouettes of flying figures in pink, orange, teal and green on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four flying silhouettes on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

Four small silhouettes of flying figures are spaced in a loose diagonal line across the side of the ribcage, with a pink top above them. Each figure has soft, blended edges and a watercolour-like wash rather than hard linework. The colours run from magenta and red through orange and teal to green, and the composition is light and airy with plenty of skin around the motifs.

Ribs Silhouette Flying figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind off the harbour had been rattling the sash all afternoon, and Mrs Hollis, who kept the boarding house at the top of Albion Steps, had given up trying to keep the window shut. On the sill sat the shoebox of cut-out figures her late husband had made for the children: four papery sprites, painted with wet watercolour so the edges bled into the paper. Magenta for the smallest, a red-orange for the one who always sulked, teal for the tall one with the sash, and a green that looked like the sea before a storm.

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Nobody saw them go. Mrs Hollis found the box empty at teatime and the window open a hand's width. Her grandson Tom, nine and certain of everything, swore he had seen them over the rooftops, following the gulls towards the pier and the last of the sun.

They turned up in odd places after that. A postcard arrived from Whitstable with a teal smudge on the stamp. A fishwife in Ramsgate reported a green sprite tangled in her net, and a child on the front at Broadstairs insisted a tiny red one had asked for a chip. Mrs Hollis never answered any of it. She just left the window open a little each night.

Autumn came and the boarding house emptied. On the last evening, Tom found four small shapes pressed flat against the landing glass, pale with rain, each one pointing towards the sea. He pushed the sash wide and let the cold air in, and the figures lifted one after another, as though they had only been waiting for permission to leave.