Black and grey tattoo of a mermaid sitting on a rock with birds in the sky, on the outer thigh of a person lying on a wooden floor.

Mermaid on a rock with birds on a thigh

Fine line · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A mermaid with long flowing hair sits on a rocky outcrop, looking away from the viewer, with a small flock of birds in the sky above. The linework is fine and the rock and tail are built up with soft grey shading. The design is entirely in black and grey ink and fills much of the thigh, with the outline of a fin extending down the leg.

Fine line Realism Thigh Mermaid Rock Bird Hair Tail Fin Sky

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold your tea, you lot, and mind the lamp, because the next bit is where my grandfather lost a tooth and most of his temper. We were nine weeks out of Valparaiso on the Marjorie Quayle, a barque with more rust than paint, and the cook had run out of onions in the third week and never forgave the sea for it.

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Off the Horn the birds came first, a little scatter of sooty things that followed us for two days and then dropped away one by one, as if somebody had rung a dinner bell. Then the fog lifted before dawn and there she was on a rock, grey as the slate roof of a chapel, combing her long hair with her back to us. Not looking at the ship. Not looking at anything we could see. Just combing, slow, the way my mother combed out wet wool in front of the stove.

Bosun Harkness wanted to row over with a lantern and a bottle of rum. Captain Ruddock said no, and then said nothing for an hour, which was worse. Young Tom Pardew, who had never been further than the Mersey, swore he'd seen a tail lift out of the water and lay itself across the stone like a wet sail drying. Nobody believed him until the fin was there in the morning light, long and fine, drawn out along the swell as though someone had pinned the sea down with a pen.

We sailed on. We always sailed on, that's the sea's whole sermon. But Tom kept that rock in the glass until it was nothing but a grey thumbprint, and he said the mermaid never once turned round to see us go. My grandfather said that was the only part worth believing. A thing that won't look at you has no call to be lying.