Colour outline tattoo of a mermaid with red hair, a purple shell and a blue to green tail on the lower leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid tattoo on a lower leg

Fine line · Calf · Colour · Photo

A mermaid is drawn in a single continuous black outline, with flowing red hair, a small purple shell or bead at the chest and a tail shaded from blue to green. The linework is smooth and fairly thin, and the colour sits loosely within the outlines with soft gradients in the tail. The design is centred on pale skin against a dark, out-of-focus background at the upper right.

Fine line Calf Mermaid Hair Tail Shell

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The 6.52 to Penhallow always smelt of the harbour, so I knew something was wrong when the woman stepped off it dripping onto the platform, her hair the colour of a fox and no ticket in her hand. She asked for the lost property office as though she had left something there years ago. I told her the office was a cupboard behind the ticket hatch, and that it held one umbrella, two prams and a tin of cough sweets nobody had come back for.

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She sat on the bench under the clock and watched the rails. Each train that came in, she studied the driver's cab the way my father used to study the sky before rain. "They lay these lines along the cliffs," she said, "and the sea never stops trying to reach them." I asked where she was headed. She touched the cord at her throat, where a small purple shell hung, and said she was waiting for someone to sign for it.

Mr Rowe, the stationmaster, came out at four with a clipboard and a face like a closed timetable. He either did not see her or chose not to, and when the last train pulled away she was gone. The bench was wet, and a line of blue-green scales lay along the slats like sequins from a dress nobody could afford. Beneath them was a slip of paper in careful capitals: RECEIVED, ONE SHELL. SIGNED FOR BY THE SEA.

I put the shell in the cupboard with the umbrella and locked it. Next morning the cupboard was damp, the shell was gone, and on the tide table on the platform wall someone had pencilled a new high water, one minute earlier than the printed one. I still check it before I lock up.