Two linked forearms show matching origami crane tattoos on the forearm, one in red and one in dark grey, against a purple background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching origami cranes on linked forearms

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two people's arms are linked at the elbow, each with a simple origami crane tattoo on the forearm. The left crane is filled in red and pink with soft shading, while the right crane is rendered in dark grey and brown tones with less contrast against the skin. The cropped composition shows red and yellow clothing on either side and a plain purple backdrop.

Forearm Crane

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The argument was over the red paper, the only sheet left in the drawer of our shop on Fargate that wasn't invoices or carbon copies. Mo had found it behind the Christmas tinsel and wanted it for his crane. Dee said he could have the grey one, the back of an old delivery note, because she had reached the drawer first and because red was the colour her dad called lucky. Gran settled it by saying nobody was folding anything until the kettle had boiled, and then she went out the back to see about the leak.

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So we folded at the counter while the rain came sideways past the window. Mo's fingers were quick and wrong. He creased the wings twice and tore one corner, and I told him a crane forgives you for mistakes so long as you don't give up on it. Dee folded slowly, licking her thumb and counting under her breath the way Gran counted stitches. By four o'clock there were eleven birds lined along the glass case, most of them lopsided, and Mo had abandoned his altogether to draw a face on its belly with a biro.

Gran sold the shop to a phone repair firm at the end of that month. We packed the birds into a shoebox, and Dee took it home on the bus, holding it on her knees the whole way to Attercliffe. I keep the box on my top shelf now. Dee and Mo still fold one each spring, and the grey one has gone as soft as cloth. When they come round, they link arms at the elbow the way they did across that counter, and neither of them will say which bird is the lucky one.