Two people with matching multicoloured watercolour-style elephant and calf tattoos on their upper backs near the shoulder blades.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching watercolour elephants on two backs

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Two people are shown from behind, each with an identical tattoo of an adult elephant walking beside a smaller calf, placed near the shoulder blade. The linework is soft and the body is filled with blended washes of pink, blue, yellow, green and purple, with loose splashes of colour around the figures. The two tattoos are shown side by side against a dark background, with the faces not visible.

Back Elephant Calf Matching tattoo Watercolour Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come up the valley overnight, and by six the bottom field was a sheet of pewter with the willows standing in it to their knees. Nessa went down the garden path in her wellingtons, past the runner beans and the broken bird bath, to where the old wall met the hedge. Her sister was already there, crouched in the wet grass, pointing with a muddy finger.

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A calf had got stuck between two roots of the fallen ash, its back legs sunk in the soft bank, bawling in a thin hoarse way that sounded far too big for its body. Their mother had gone up to the gate, shouldering the fence, calling back over her shoulder in long low notes that rolled across the water. Nessa knelt, pressed her palms flat against the calf's ribs, and felt its heart going like a bird's against a window.

It was Tamsin who thought of the rope from the shed, and Tamsin who tied the loop, and Nessa who held the calf steady while the old cow came down the bank and stood over them both, close enough that her breath steamed on the back of Nessa's neck. Nobody spoke. When the first leg came free with a wet sucking sound, the cow pressed her great grey head against the little one's flank and did not move until the second leg came loose too.

By noon the sun had burned the mist off the fields, and the calf was on its feet in the paddock, shaking water from its ears and butting at its mother's belly as if nothing had happened. Tamsin leaned on the gate beside her. "She'll not forget that," she said. "Nor will we." Nessa smiled and said nothing, because the cow had already turned and was walking the calf slowly away towards the trees, and the two of them were leaving bright footprints on the green.