Red and graphite sketch of a geisha holding a sword, with a dragon tattoo design drawn across her shoulder and chest in Japanese style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geisha with dragon shoulder tattoo sketch

Japanese · Shoulder · Mixed · Flash

A pencil and red crayon sketch of a woman in an elaborate updo with ornate hair pins, holding a wrapped sword against her shoulder. A dragon design is drawn over her upper chest and shoulder, partly covered by a kimono with floral patterning. The linework is loose and sketched, with red used for the main lines and grey pencil for shading.

Japanese Shoulder Geisha Dragon Kimono Sword Hair ornament Floral pattern Woman

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sword came in on the 22:14 from Leeds, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with red cord, and nobody on the platform would claim it. Mr Okabe, the old ticket inspector who still wore his cap indoors, said it was a walking stick. I did not believe him. A walking stick does not hum when the trains go under the footbridge.

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She came for it just before midnight, when the rain had thinned to a spit and the last Hull train was idling with its doors open. She didn't ask for it by name. She asked whether the dragon had been left in its sheath, and I said I hadn't looked, which was true, and she seemed pleased by that, as though it were the right answer. We sat on the bench under the clock while she untied the cord. The oilcloth fell away and there was no steel, only a long blade of pale wood with a red dragon coiled down its length, its lines loose and quick, as if someone had drawn it in one breath and never gone back over it.

She told me her grandmother had carried it off a boat at Hull in 1952 with nothing else but a suitcase and a promise. The wrapping had always been there to keep the dragon asleep. Then she laughed and said the dragon had never once slept through a train. I asked her what she wanted me to write on the lost property tag. She thought about it, then took my pen and wrote, in neat capitals, ONE DRAGON, AWAKE. I still have the carbon copy in the drawer, and the 22:14 has not come in on time since.