Back view of a full back Japanese style tattoo of dragons among red clouds and waves, with colour and grey shading, extending down onto the thighs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Full back dragon tattoo

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

The image shows a person's bare back and upper legs covered by a large dragon composition, with one dragon coiling across the upper back and a second head near the lower back. The linework is bold with grey shading that gives the scales and clouds depth. Red, yellow, pink and blue ink sit against grey, and the design is set against a black background.

Japanese Back Thigh Dragon Cloud Wave Back piece

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band at the Marina Ballroom had been stuck on the same foxtrot since nine, and nobody on the floor noticed the sea had climbed the promenade steps until it slapped against the glass doors. You kept your count under your breath, one, two, slow, with Dolores Keen's hand resting on your shoulder and her rings cold against your collar. The lights dimmed to a blue that matched nothing in the room.

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Walter, who swept the stage every night and had never once been seen to sit down, said the painted dragon above the proscenium had been waiting for weather since the hall opened in 1931. He said it the way other men talk about the tide, flatly, while stacking chairs. Nobody believed him until the grey clouds painted on the ceiling began to roll over the chandelier like smoke, and a red-gold head pushed through the plaster above the bandstand.

The musicians fled. The dancers scattered toward the cloakroom. You didn't stop, because Dolores had taught you that the one unforgivable thing on a dance floor is breaking the step, and she was already turning you under the dragon's open jaw. Its whiskers swept the rafters. Pink and blue scales flashed past so close you felt their cold, and the wave that came with it lifted the parquet into a long, rising swell that carried you both in perfect time.

The dragon wound back up through the ceiling as the sea drew off the steps. When the lights came up, the floor was dry and the band was playing the same foxtrot as if nothing had happened. Dolores opened her palm. A single scale lay in it, blue-grey and warm, and she pressed it into your hand and said, 'Same time next week.'