Black and grey traditional tattoo of a grim reaper in sunglasses holding a scythe beside a palm tree and moon, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Grim reaper and palm tree on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A grim reaper wearing sunglasses holds a scythe, standing beside a palm tree with coconuts and a full moon behind it. Bold black outlines are combined with stippled dotwork shading on the hood, robe, moon and background. The design is in black ink only and sits centred on the forearm against a dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mistress Oddny, the ledger says the Queen of Vellmar is due at the moon's third turning, but I have not come for her. I have been sent to Saltmarrow, the island of coconut groves on the far side of the Ember Sea, and I am writing this from under a palm, which is the only shade the island allows.

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The islanders here do not fear me the way the mainland does. A boy named Teodric sold me a pair of tinted spectacles for two copper pennies and said they would hide the hollows in my face from the fishwives. I wore them down to the harbour and the fishwives waved. Nobody on Saltmarrow has died of anything but age in forty years, and the old men say the sea keeps them, so I have had little to do but sit beneath the palms and watch the full moon rise like a coin over the water.

Then the storm came in on the ninth night. Teodric climbed the tallest palm to cut a green nut for a dying widow, and the trunk split beneath him. I had my scythe ready. I stood at the foot of the tree with the moon behind me and waited for his name to be read out.

He landed in the sand with the nut still in his fist. The ledger page did not turn. I wrote in the margin that the sea had lent him back to the island, and I did not collect him, and I am not sure what that makes me. Send a stronger pair of spectacles. The sun here is cruel.

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