Colour tattoo of a mermaid with teal hair and a starfish beside a treasure chest of gold coins, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid and treasure chest on an upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A full-colour tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder of a woman wearing a red top, shown in profile. The central figure is a bare-chested mermaid with teal hair, a starfish in her hair and a green scaled tail, with a red and white striped pole behind her. Bold outlines and smooth shading define the shapes, and a treasure chest spilling gold coins and pearls sits at the bottom of the design against a warm yellow glow.

Upper arm Mermaid Starfish Pearl Stripe Sun

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are hauling the last pot of the morning when the rope goes slack in your hands, and Mags at the tiller swears she saw a green flicker under the hull. Nobody on the Brightwater Lass believes in mermaids before breakfast, least of all after the cold coffee and the bad news from the fish merchant in Ardgour. The fleet is three boats short this season. Your brother's share went down with the Heron in March, and the bank wants its money by the spring tide.

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The pot comes up heavy, and not with crab. Tangled in the mesh is a sea chest no bigger than a loaf, black with weed, its iron corners furred with barnacles. Inside, under a skin of brine, gold coins lie in a drift of pearls, bright as the sun coming up behind the Sound. Mags goes quiet. You wait for the laugh that doesn't come.

Then the woman rises beside the hull, hair the colour of teal kelp, a starfish caught in it like a brooch. She does not look at the chest. She looks at you, and tells you that the lighthouse on Carn Mor has been painted red and white for four hundred years so sailors would know which rocks to fear, and that she has grown tired of watching men drown for stripes.

She takes one coin, only one, and sinks back into the green water with a flick of her tail. You carry the chest up the slip and sell none of it. You buy the Heron's share back and tell nobody where the rest went, except the gulls, who have never kept a secret in their lives.