Black and grey merlion tattoo with a fish tail on the thigh, with a partly visible coloured design at the left edge.

Merlion tattoo on the thigh

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A merlion, with a lion's head and a scaled fish tail, is shown in shaded black and grey with an outlined form. The scales and tail fin have fine linework and soft grey shading, and some red tones appear across the body. A partly visible coloured design, showing teal, orange and yellow, sits at the left edge of the frame.

Thigh Lion Fish tail Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stone creature had spat into the river for longer than anyone on Boat Quay could remember, and nobody had ever asked it to stop. Mei Ling's grandfather called it rude. Her aunt said it was a warning to the lorry drivers who came down the steps with their wages already spent. Mei Ling, who was nine and spent every evening on the wall with a paper cone of sago and palm sugar, decided the lion-headed thing was simply thirsty.

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So on the last Thursday of the wet season she carried a cup of shaved ice from her grandmother's stall, red beans buried at the bottom, rose syrup poured over the top like a sunset. She climbed onto the wall, leaned out over the brown water, and set the cup on the lichen beside the stone fish's scaled tail. The river was loud with barges. Nobody looked up.

The tide turned before she got back to the stall. When she returned at dusk the cup was gone, and the stone fish was quiet, its mouth closed for the first time she could recall. Her grandmother scolded her for leaving the good bowl out. Mei Ling said nothing and ate her sago slowly, watching the water.

Next morning the wall was dry and the steps were sticky with pink. A thin line of syrup ran down the scales to the river, and below it, bobbing against the stone, a single red bean floated face up, as if the water had sent back a receipt.