Traditional colour tattoo of a horse wearing an orange halter inside a horseshoe, with leaves and a banner reading Lil Sebastian, on the upper arm.

Horse portrait in horseshoe on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A horse's head in a haltered profile sits inside a green horseshoe frame, with leafy stems and orange berries around it and a yellow banner below reading Lil Sebastian in black lettering. The horse is shaded in soft greys and tans with bold black outlines, while the halter, leaves, berries and banner add warm orange, green and yellow. The design is centred on the upper arm, and the photo is cropped so that no face is visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The grey pony came down to the slipway every evening at the turn of the tide, and the fishermen at Cray Hythe said he could smell a blow before the glass fell. His name was Sebastian, but the lads had taken to calling him Lil Sebastian after the boat he once pulled off the rocks single-handed, and the name stuck the way wet rope sticks to a palm.

Keep reading

In the autumn of the great gale, nine boats went out past the Gannet Rock before dawn. Ada Fenwick stood at the top of the shingle with her shawl pulled tight and watched the sky turn the colour of old pewter. Sebastian stood beside her, his coat dark with spray and his orange halter knotted at his neck. He would not be led to the stable. He kept his head turned toward the water, and every so often he stamped the stones as if he were counting them.

When the first boat came round the point at dusk, its sail was in rags and its mast was gone. The pony walked into the surf to his chest, took the bow line in his teeth, and leaned into the wind until the keel grated on the stones. Then he went back for the next, and the next, six times in all, until the engines and the cursing men were the only sounds on the beach. Three boats were lost that night. Six came home.

The next morning Ada nailed a horseshoe above the net loft door with its open end turned upward so the luck would not run out. Beneath it she painted Sebastian's name in letters a child could read, and no one at Cray Hythe ever again called him anything but the pony.

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