Colour tattoo of a mermaid holding a baby, with flowing hair, bubbles and a blue and purple scaled tail, on skin at the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid cradling a baby in colour

Other · Colour · Photo

A mermaid with long, flowing hair cradles a baby against her bare upper body, with her tail curling below. Bubbles and wavy hair lines fill the space around the figure. The outlines are soft and the shading is gentle, with pink, purple and blue ink on the hair and tail and warm tones in the skin.

Other Mermaid Mother Hair Bubble Tail Scale Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Hold the cup still, Tam, or you'll wake the child," said the old woman, and nobody in the taproom of the Drowned Lantern argued, for the snow had buried the road to Skelder and the fire was the only thing between them and the dark.

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She told it the way her grandmother had, with her hands doing half the work. Three winters back, when the herring boats came in late and the harbour froze at its lip, a woman rose out of the grey water below the old pier. Her hair streamed out behind her like weed in a current, catching the moonlight in pink and violet ribbons. She held a baby against her bare shoulder, and she wound her tail about the rocks so the bubbles rose round her in a ring like pearls.

Nobody on the quay would go near her, except Ada Pennick, the net-mender's widow, who had buried her own boy that spring and had nothing left to be afraid of. She waded out to the knees, cold to the bone, and held out her arms. The mermaid looked at her a long while, then laid the infant in them and slid back under the black water without a splash.

Here the old woman stopped and let the fire pop. Ada raised the child as her own, and the girl grew up with salt in her hair and a habit of humming to the tide. On frosty nights, the old woman says, you can still see a pale shape turning slow circles beneath the pier, and the ice never closes over the place where she went down.