Woman seen from behind on a beach with gold metallic designs on her upper arms, shoulder and spine.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gold metallic body art on a beach

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A woman with long brown hair, seen from behind, lifts one hand to her hair on a sunny beach beside rocks and sea. Gold metallic designs appear on her upper arm as bands and a chain, and a vertical column of small diamond shapes runs down her spine. The bright, warm image shows the designs as metallic body art rather than black or coloured ink.

Upper arm Shoulder Back Woman Beach Sea Rock Spine Diamond Chain Band Metallic Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the generator coughs its last, the carousel has already gone to Saltcombe on the back of Ray's lorry, and you are left on the empty prom with a tin of gold size and a ladder that sinks into the shingle. Ada, who runs the coconut shy, wants the ticket board regilded before the tide takes the last of the light, and she has trusted you with the brush because you were the only one still hanging about.

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You work the way she taught you, one dab at a time, the leaf so thin it lifts on any breath. Gulls walk the rail behind you, pretending not to watch. Every few strokes you stop and look at the sea, the colour of cold tea, where the lamps from the Ferris wheel are breaking into small bright pieces on the water. You count them until the count stops meaning anything.

Ada comes back with chips in newspaper and climbs halfway up to inspect your work. She says nothing about the letters. Instead she takes your wrist and turns it to the lamplight, where a row of gold flakes has stuck to the skin in a neat, tilted column, and a second row of narrow bands runs up your forearm where the sleeve rode back. You had not noticed the ladder rungs taking the leaf from your hands.

She laughs and tells you the fair leaves at six. The gold will stay on you for three days, rubbing onto the wheel of the bus, the rail of the bridge, the cheek of anyone you let hold your hand, a trail of small bright marks across the whole county. You find you do not mind at all.