Small black silhouette tattoo of a mermaid swimming beside two fish on the inner wrist and forearm.

Mermaid and fish silhouette on a wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black silhouette of a mermaid with a flowing tail swims above two tiny fish, trailing diagonally across the inner wrist. The solid ink has smooth, filled edges with no visible shading, and the image shows only black ink on pale skin. The plain background of a glittery orange bag and dark surface keeps the focus on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last tide-clerk of Old Harrow kept the sea-gates shut by counting fish, because the gates only answered to a count. Two hundred and six by the spring ebb, she told the boy Tamsin, and not one more, or the water would come up the chapel steps and stay.

Keep reading

The mermaid came up the drowned road every seventh night, her tail dark as coal against the green water. She asked for the two smallest fish of each catch, the ones with sand in their gills, and in return she left a single silver scale on the third step. Tamsin thought it a poor trade until he saw what the scale did to the rust on the sluice wheel, which turned as sweet as the day it was forged.

One night the clerk lay sick with fever and Tamsin went down alone with the net. The mermaid was waiting at the third step, her hair loose and drifting like weed. He held out the two fish. She took them, sent them ahead of her in a slow swim, and kept her eyes on his hands until he understood she wanted more than fish. He went down to the knee, then the waist, and the water was warm as a bath. Behind him the gate ground shut on its own, and when the clerk counted at dawn it came to two hundred and five, one short and one whole.

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