Four small colour guinea pig tattoos in a row on the inner forearm, with a photo of four real guinea pigs on a red towel below.

Four guinea pig tattoos in a row on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The top panel shows four small guinea pig outlines in a row on a forearm, each drawn with a thin dark outline and filled with soft tan, peach, pink and pale grey shading. The bottom panel shows four real guinea pigs in a cage on a red towel, in black, white, grey and tricolour coats. The layout is a simple side-by-side collage with the tattoo photo above.

Fine line Forearm Animal Pet Outline Collage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The customs officer at Varnay bridge had already waved the carter through twice that morning, so when he lifted the sacking a third time he meant to be thorough. Beneath it, in a row of wicker, sat four small animals, each the colour of a different hour: tan like toasted bread, peach like the inside of a plum, pale pink like a shell, and grey like the river under a wet sky.

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"What are they?" asked the officer. "Cavies," said the carter, which was true, though his grandmother had always called them little pigs of the sea, which was not. "Four," said the officer. "Four," said the carter, and he counted them aloud, touching each one on the back as if they might argue. The officer wrote the number in his ledger, then wrote it again because the ink had run thin.

The old rule at Varnay was simple. Every living thing that crossed paid a duty in something it could spare. The officer asked what the four would pay. The carter said the tan one paid its warmth, the peach one its patience, the pink one its noise. The grey one, he said, had paid already, down at the river before dawn, to a girl who needed a companion for the winter.

The officer did not argue. He stamped the ledger, lifted the barrier, and watched the cart roll onto the far bank. Only three heads showed above the wicker. The grey one had slipped inside the carter's coat, where it stayed warm against his ribs all the way to the first village, and the officer, who had never once looked closely at what came across his bridge, never thought to ask about it.