Shaded grey and green mermaid silhouette on a rock before a pale moon, with the words somewhere beyond my wildest dreams in script on the upper back.

Mermaid on a rock with script quote on upper back

Lettering · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A mermaid sits on a rock in front of a large pale moon, with the figure and rock shaded in grey and green and a red-orange tint on the hair. Soft peach and grey washes sit beneath the rock to suggest water. A curved black script line below reads somewhere beyond my wildest dreams.

Lettering Shoulder Mermaid Moon Rock Sea Quote Script

Find an artist for this

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

The last up train had not stopped at Gullhaven since the war, so when the lamp on the platform swung one October night, it was the stationmaster's daughter who went down the stone steps to see why. Nell Pardoe found the sea-woman sitting on the rock at the end of the breakwater, her tail dark with wet and her hair the colour of an old lamp hood. The moon hung behind her like a penny nobody had thought to spend.

Keep reading

"I want a ticket," the woman said. "Where to?" asked Nell, because her father always asked that. The woman lifted one finger toward the waiting room, where the enamel board above the door still carried a destination painted years ago in curling letters: somewhere beyond my wildest dreams. Nobody had ever repainted it, and nobody had ever bought a ticket for it. "That is the only place I have not been," the woman said.

Nell wrote the ticket in her father's carbon book, tore it along the perforations, and carried it down to the rock, where the spray soaked her shoes through. The woman took it between two fingers, read it twice, and tucked it under the shell comb in her hair. The rails began to hum. Out past the signal, a train came in without a driver, its carriages lit gold from within, and the sea-woman slid off the rock and went under the water without a splash.

In the morning the stationmaster found a dry ticket on the bench, stamped with a date that had not come yet. He pinned it behind the ticket window and never said where it had come from. Nell still goes down the steps on clear nights, and the rock is always empty, with the moon sitting on it like a coin someone has finally spent.