Black and grey traditional style tattoos of two harlequin acrobats, one hanging from a rope and one falling, on the outer thigh and knee.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Harlequin acrobats on a thigh and knee

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

Two harlequin acrobat figures in diamond-patterned costumes are tattooed down the outer leg. The upper figure hangs from a rope or trapeze, and the lower figure reaches upwards near the knee, with the checkered costumes built up from dense black and grey shading. Dark geometric linework and a larger dark tattoo appear at the top of the frame, and the plain background is out of focus.

Traditional Thigh Rope Diamond pattern Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Eight bells, and the cocoa had boiled over again, so I was scraping it off the hob when the Corvane brothers came down the companionway in their diamond suits, arguing about the swell as if it had insulted them personally.

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I cooked for the Halloran Floating Circus that spring, aboard a coaster chartered to carry a big top, two ponies, a fire-eater who never touched anything I made, and the twins. The galley was the only room with a fixed table, so the whole company ate there shoulder to shoulder while the rigging creaked overhead. Ansel had strung the trapeze bar across the forward hold that afternoon, and nobody liked it, least of all the mate.

We were off the Dogger Bank when the ship lurched and Ansel, hanging upside down by his knees from the hook, lost his grip. I heard the rope hiss before I saw anything. Then Piet was across the hold with both arms up, reaching the way you'd reach for a child stepping off a kerb, and he caught his brother by the wrist. Neither of them made a sound. The ship rolled back and they hung there together, two harlequins turned up toward the lamp, while the cocoa caught again on the stove behind me.

Afterwards Ansel said he'd only been testing the rope. Piet said nothing and went down to check the bar. I took the pan off the hob, poured the cocoa into two chipped mugs and set them on the table, where they stayed warm for a long time before either of them came back up.