Colour tattoo of two hedgehogs among red, orange and yellow autumn leaves on a forearm, with dark outlines and soft shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hedgehogs among autumn leaves on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two hedgehogs peek out from a cluster of maple-style autumn leaves, one in profile on the left and one facing right. The hedgehogs are shaded with fine grey and brown strokes, and the leaves are filled with red, orange and yellow tones that fade gently across their surfaces. Bold black outlines define the leaves and animals, and the design wraps diagonally around the limb.

Traditional Botanical Forearm Autumn leaves Maple leaf Leaves Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the first week of October the leaves have come down the hill faster than the tide can carry them, and you find the two hedgehogs in the lee of the net store at Saltmarrow Quay, where the maple by the chandlery has dropped its whole crown onto the cobbles. The smaller one has a torn ear. The larger one watches you with the patience of someone who has been waiting for a boat that is always late.

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You are supposed to be sweeping the slipway for Mrs Pengelly, who pays in tea and bad news. Instead you kneel and bring your hand down slowly, and the larger hedgehog does not roll into a ball. It noses at your knuckle, then turns and steps onto a leaf the colour of rust, pulling its sibling after it. For an hour you shift cod boxes along the wall, and the two of them move ahead of you like a pair of old fishermen checking their lines.

On Friday the wind swings round to the north-east and the gulls go quiet. The hedgehogs are gone from the net store. In their place is a neat heap of leaves packed into the gap under the slipway wall and sealed with a twist of tarred rope. Mrs Pengelly says they always leave in October. She says the quay belongs to them until the first frost, and to you after.

You walk the harbour wall at dusk and think about who taught you to leave a gap for things that cannot ask. Below you the boats knock gently together. Somewhere under the granite a small animal is breathing slow, and the maple leaves are already turning to lace in the cold water.