Neo-traditional style tattoo of a cute pink octopus wearing a purple bow and holding a pink gem, with bold black outlines and soft shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Kawaii octopus with bow and gem

Neo-trad · Colour · Photo

A cartoon octopus with large round eyes, a small smile and a purple bow on its head holds a pink faceted gem with its tentacles. The bold black outlines are filled with pink, purple, blue, green and yellow, with soft blended shading across the body. The design is centred on a plain background, with the tentacles curling around the gem at the lower half.

Neo-trad Octopus Bow Gem Heart Tentacle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Gullhaven remembered when the octopus first came up the harbour steps, only that it wore a purple bow and would not let go of anything it had been given. So when the night watchman found it under the lamp at the fish quay, cradling a pink stone the size of a hen's egg, he did not try to take the stone away. He sat down on the wet cobbles and waited, as his grandmother had told him to wait for anything that came out of the sea after dark.

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The octopus had a way of looking at a person that made them want to be honest. It blinked its large round eyes, and the watchman told it about his wife, who had gone to Leith for work and had not sent word since March. He told it about the bakery that had shut and the tram that no longer ran past the chandler's. The octopus listened, turning the gem slowly with its arms, and the lamplight broke into small pink squares across the stones.

At the turn of the tide it unfurled one arm and pressed the gem into his palm. It was warm. When he held it up to the lamp he saw a small shape moving inside, a woman in a green coat climbing a hill toward a lit window. He understood then that the stone was not the octopus's to keep. It only held what was lent to it until the right person came asking.

He walked home along the water with the gem in his coat. The next morning there was a letter on his doormat, postmarked from Leith, and on the step below it lay a single purple ribbon, coiled as though someone had left it there to dry.