Upper arm tattoo of a geisha holding a folding fan beside a dragon, in grey shading with red accents, Japanese style.

Geisha with fan and dragon on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A geisha with an ornate hair ornament holds an open folding fan, with a dragon coiled below her and red swirling clouds at the base of the piece. The portrait and dragon are rendered in soft grey shading with fine detail in the fan and hair, while the red accents add contrast. The design wraps around the upper arm and fills the frame, with the woman's face and head cropped out of view.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate of Ashiba castle has been open for a hundred years, and the wind uses it as a door. You pick your way across the fallen stones with a lantern in one hand and a letter in the other, the paper gone soft from three days of damp travel. Below the keep the moat has drained to a green ribbon, and in its bed lies the old dragon's skin, a long crust of scales the colour of wet slate.

Keep reading

Madame Ichiyo told you never to climb here after dark. She said the red clouds rose off the water before a storm, and that a woman with a fan could call them down. You did not believe her until the evening you found her fan folded on the step of the tea house, its painted waves still damp, and the dragon's shadow was already moving under the bridge.

You open the fan at the top of the stairs, where the last wall still stands. The paper cracks and sighs. Far below, the water lifts, and something long turns over in the mud, a slow curl of red cloud rising behind it like smoke from a lamp just blown out. You understand then that the dragon never guarded the castle. It has been waiting for someone to ask it to leave.

You close the fan. The clouds settle back into the reeds, the moat goes still and ordinary, and you walk down the stairs with the letter still folded in your sleeve, unread, because the answer was already written in the water.

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