Traditional style colour tattoo on the upper arm of a mermaid kissing a sailor, framed in an oval rope border with a lighthouse and flames.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid and sailor kiss in a rope frame

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A mermaid with long dark hair and a green scaled tail kisses a sailor in a white cap, set within an oval rope border. Behind them sit a lighthouse, a teal sky with black zigzag streaks, and a striped orange flame, all in bold black outlines. Solid colour fills in green, teal, yellow and orange sit alongside black and grey shading in the background and sailor's clothing.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp at Scarrow Point had been dark for three nights when Joss Penhallow climbed the iron stairs with a tin of paraffin and a face like wet slate. There was a storm walking across the bay, lightning stepping on the water like it had somewhere to be, and below him the reef was already taking timber off some poor ship's bones. The bell buoy had stopped ringing. That was the part that frightened him most.

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He found the mermaid on the lowest ledge, her green tail hooked over the weed and her dark hair streaming like a wet mooring rope. She had nothing to say to him. She only looked up at the gallery as if she'd been waiting for the light to come back on. When he tried to speak, she laughed, a sound like a gull choking on a fish bone, and reached up to put a cold hand on his collar.

He lit the wick anyway. The flame came up orange and striped through the glass, and out past the reef a fishing smack swung its bow toward the gold and held there. The mermaid hauled herself onto the rock beside him, shivering, and when the sky cracked white she kissed him hard enough to knock the cap off his head. It went spinning into the surf, the sailor's cap, and he never saw it again.

Next morning the harbour master wrote one smack saved and one cap lost in the log. Men in the Ship Inn still swear they saw two figures on the point that night, one holding the other up against the wind. Joss says the sea gave him his cap back once, years after, wrapped round a crab pot. He wears it crooked now, the way she used to set it on him.

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