Colour tattoo of a dark-haired mermaid with closed eyes and a teal scale tail, surrounded by small red fish, on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid with red fish on a wrist

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon-style mermaid with long dark hair and closed eyes sits at the centre of the design, with a teal scale tail tapering to a fin. Small red fish are scattered around her on the left and right, and bold black outlines define the figure and hair. Flat teal and red fills dominate, with the skin of the forearm and a plain background visible around the tattoo.

Forearm Mermaid Fish Scale Tail Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mo Tennant had been gutting herring on the Ardmore pier since she was eleven, and she knew the harbour by its sounds before she knew it by its light. That morning the nets came up light and wrong. Skipper Dunn swore at the winch while the gulls sat silent on the rail, and when the last mesh cleared the water, something tangled in it caught the sun. It was a carved wooden woman no longer than a forearm, her tail painted a bright green that had mostly flaked away, her hair blackened with tar. Her eyes were closed as if she were listening to something under the hull.

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Dunn wanted her thrown back without a look. Mo didn't. She wrapped the figure in a flour sack and carried it up to the slip, where the boats rocked against their ropes and the fish-house smelled of salt and smoke. Her grandmother had told her that the sea took what it was owed, and that a fleet which forgot to pay would find its catch thinning by the spring. Mo had thought it a story for frightening children. Now she sat on the cold stones with the sack in her lap and tried to remember what the old woman said came next.

She went down at the turn of the tide and knelt on the weed-slick steps. When she opened the sack the figure was warm, though the night air was sharp. She dipped it into the black water. Something stirred beneath the harbour lamps, and a scatter of small red fish rose to the surface, circling the wooden tail as though they had been waiting all along. Mo let go. The fish followed the figure out past the breakwater, a flicker of red in the dark.

The next morning Dunn's nets came up heavy with silver, and he didn't swear once. He just stood at the rail with his cap in his hands and didn't look at her, which Mo supposed was as close to thanks as the Ardmore fleet ever got.