Black fine line tattoo of a kneeling figure, a dark cloud and a serpent on a woman's upper back, shown from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Kneeling figure, cloud and serpent on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a black ink tattoo on her upper back beside the shoulder blade. The design shows a kneeling figure in a long robe, a serpent-like form curling around the head area, a dark stylised cloud on the left and a thin stem with a small flower at the lower right. The linework is fine and mostly unshaded apart from solid black areas in the cloud and serpent, set against plain skin and a dark top.

Fine line Back Figure Cloud Serpent Flower Stem Robe Woman

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The serpent has been in the well since before the chapel was built, and Mrs Pryce at the post office will tell you so if you ask her twice. You are sixteen the summer the rain stops, and the reservoir drops so low that the old bell-house shows its steps. Your mother sends you down with a jug and a list, and you go the long way, past the allotments, because the short way runs under the smoke from the foundry and you have had enough of soot in your hair.

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On the third afternoon you find the kneeling woman at the edge of the water. She is carved or perhaps only painted, a long robe pooling around her knees, and a thin stalk of something rising beside her with one white flower open at the top. Above her the cloud hangs low, dark as a bruise, and out of it comes the serpent, looping down over her shoulder to rest its head against her brow as if it were listening. You kneel too, because your stockings are already wet from the mud, and you put your palm flat on the cold stone and wait.

Nothing speaks. The cloud does not rain. But when you stand up the flower has dropped a petal into your jug, and the water is suddenly clear enough to see the bottom of the reservoir, every street of the drowned village laid out in order, the lamps still lit in the window of the house where your grandmother was born. Mrs Pryce would say that is nonsense. You carry the jug home with both hands and say nothing at all, which is what the serpent seemed to want.