Drawing of a mermaid with long flowing hair decorated with a starfish, seashells and pink flowers, in black linework with teal and peach wash.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid with shells and starfish

Colour · Flash

A stylised mermaid with large eyes and long, flowing hair fills the frame, her hair decorated with a starfish, several seashells and pink and peach flowers. The fine black linework is detailed through the hair, with soft teal and peach shading fading into the background and lower body. The composition is centred on the face and upper body, with the scales of her tail suggested at the bottom edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mrs Okafor,

Keep reading

You will not believe what came in off the boat on Tuesday, and I am writing it down before the rain washes the memory out of my head. Our Hector went out past the breakwater for pollack and came back with a net full of starfish and one wet, furious comb caught in the mesh. I told him to throw it back. He said it had hair still caught in its teeth, long and silver, and that it had been singing.

I did not believe him until the rain stopped on Wednesday and I walked down to the fish market on the harbour. Stall nine had a crate of scallops and a bucket of whelks, and beside it sat a woman I had never seen before, perched on an upturned creel with a pink hibiscus tucked behind one ear. She was selling shells, each one wrapped in yesterday's newspaper, and each one hummed when you held it to your ear. She asked only one thing in return: that the buyer tell the story of the shell to the next person who asked.

I bought the cone-shaped one with the blue ridges. It sits on my kitchen windowsill now. When I hold it to my ear at night, the sea comes up through the glass, and under the sea, faint as a wireless in another room, I hear someone laughing at the rain.

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