Purple galaxy-style whale tattoo with white stars and a white-outlined mouth on the inner forearm, shown in a close-up and a wider view.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Galaxy whale on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A humpback-style whale swims across the forearm, filled with deep violet and blue shading and scattered white dots that suggest stars. Its mouth, fin and eye are picked out with fine white and pale lines, while soft gradients give the body a glowing, cosmic look. The top photo is a close, straight-on view, and the lower photo shows the whole forearm and hand with the tail near the wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ines,

Keep reading

The whale came up under the Hebrides the week the almanac went missing, and Captain Orr swore it was carrying the night in its back. I did not believe him until I was on the foredeck at three in the morning with a lamp and a pencil, and the water beside the hull had turned the colour of a bruise. Every dot on its flank was a star I could name. There was Vega, pale as a tooth, and a little cluster I took for the Pleiades, sliding along under the swell.

Orr wanted to harpoon it for the oil. I told him nobody had ever charted a sky that could swim, and if he wanted the stars back he would have to let the beast finish its crossing. He laughed at me, but the men went quiet. Even the boy from Stornoway stopped his whistling. We stood there while the whale rolled once, slow as a gate, and its white eye caught the lamp and held it.

Here is the part I have not told anyone. When I checked my log the next morning, the positions I had written the night before had changed. Every star had moved exactly one notch east, as though the whale had carried them a little way on its journey. I have kept the page folded in my breast pocket since. Come up in June and I will show you the chart, though I suspect you will say I have been at the rum.

Yours in salt and ink, Uncle Tam

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