Colour drawing of a whale filled with a purple, blue and pink galaxy of stars on a pale background, shown as a standalone tattoo design with no body part visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Galaxy-filled whale drawing

Colour · Flash

A whale swims to the right, its body filled with a night sky of swirling purple, blue and pink nebula tones and scattered white stars. The outline is dark and the fins and tail are shaded in deep violet and black, with a small pale eye near the head. The drawing sits on a plain, pale off-white background with soft shading at the edges.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Oona,

Keep reading

The tower roof has no slates left, so I write this sitting in the lee of the broken battlement with the ink pot wedged between two stones. Last night the sea went black and flat, and out past the rocks something came up under the stars. Not a boat. A whale, the colour of a bruise, and it was swimming through the sky as much as through the water. I could see the Plough through its flank, and a smear of pink where the Milky Way ought to be, with sparks pricking it all over like frost on a pane.

Mother's old rhyme says the whales carry the spilt stars home to the deep, so the sea never runs out of light. I laughed at that when I was small. Last night I didn't laugh. The whale turned its head towards the castle, slow as a monk at vespers, and its eye was a single pale moon with nothing behind it but more dark.

Tomorrow the steward's men come up from Kilhaven to strip the last of the iron from the postern gate. I have told them the gate is haunted. They believe me more readily than they would believe the truth, which is that I am waiting for the whale to come back and I do not know why.

Come home before the spring tides. Bring the good lamp oil, and do not look for me in the water. Look up.

Your loving brother, Tam

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