Black line tattoo of a long-legged elephant carrying an obelisk on its back, placed on the inner forearm.

Long-legged elephant with obelisk on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single elephant stands on very long, thin legs with a saddle-like cloth and a tall pointed structure on its back. The design uses fine black outlines with light hatched shading along the body and legs. It is shown in black ink only, set against pale skin and a light background, with the design running vertically up the forearm toward the wrist.

Fine line Forearm Elephant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The thaw had not come by the second week of January, and the elephant was still standing in the top field when Mrs Pruett's boy went out with the feed bucket. It stood on legs as long and thin as hazel switches, frost gathering on them like lace, and on its back sat a cloth saddle and a tall grey stone that narrowed to a point against the sky. Nobody on Hollin Farm had ordered an elephant. Nobody on Hollin Farm had ever needed one.

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Ada came out with her gloves in her coat pocket and her breath going up in front of her. She stood at the gate for a long time, counting the legs. Four, she decided, though the beast seemed more interested in keeping its balance than in anything she might say. The stone had a carved line running up one face, and when she tilted her head the line looked like a sum she had been trying to finish since October.

She fetched her father's tin of tallow and a length of rope, because the ploughing had to get done and the animal was blocking the gateway. The elephant let her tie the rope about its neck without complaint. It walked the way a heron wades through shallows, lifting each foot with care, and it led her down the lane past the frozen pond and the barn with its broken shutter.

At the bottom of the orchard it knelt, slow as a folding ladder, and let the stone slide onto the snow. Ada looked at the point, then at the white field stretching toward the hills, and understood it had been carried here to be planted. She pulled off one glove and pressed her bare palm to the cold stone, and the sky above the orchard turned the colour of pewter.