Black and grey tattoo of an elephant head framed by a mandala, with lotus flowers and dotted chains, on the inner forearm.

Mandala elephant head on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a front-facing elephant head with ornate ears, a lotus crown and a small mandala arch behind it. Fine dotted lines hang from the ears and trunk, and a lotus and leafy sprig sit beside the trunk. The shading is black and grey, with stippled detail in the ears and fine linework throughout.

Dotwork Botanical Forearm Elephant Mandala Lotus Leaves Dot Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pellow had given up asking the lodgers to leave the elephant alone. It stood on the hall table of Seaview House, a carved head no longer than a loaf, its ears fanned out like the sails of a sloop, a lotus pressed into its brow and a dotted chain of beads looping from its tusks. Every Thursday she dusted it with a chamois, and every Thursday she found the same thing wrong: someone had moved it three inches to the left.

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Agnes Tulley, who had arrived in October with one suitcase and a cough, was the first to notice that the beads were real. Little glass seeds threaded on wire, and they rattled whenever the front door opened. She told nobody. She sat on the stairs in the mornings listening to the tide come in under the pier, counting the rattles.

Then the house began to empty for winter, and the elephant went with the last guest, a retired purser called Hal Varder, who wrapped it in a tea towel and carried it down the esplanade like a baby. Mrs Pellow watched him go from the step. Agnes watched the table.

Two weeks later a parcel came for Agnes. Inside was a disc of cardboard cut from a biscuit tin, its edge scalloped like lace, and a note in capitals: IT NEVER LIKED THE HALL. KEEP THE BEADS. Agnes laughed, the first real laugh the house had heard since summer, and hung the disc above the door, where the morning light caught the glass and threw it across the floorboards in a chain of small, patient ships.