Black ink line drawing of a mermaid with swirling hair and a fishtail, shown as a tattoo design on white.

Mermaid with swirling hair line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A seated mermaid with long, wavy hair that curls into spirals at the top, her arm raised with the hand turned inwards. Her fishtail sweeps up and over to the right, with the fin drawn as broad, tapering leaves. The bold black outlines and fine hatched strands sit on a plain white background, with no shading or colour.

Mermaid Hair Swirl Fin Wave

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 train had already gone north when the mermaid came up the goods track, dragging her tail through the cinders like a wet sail. Stationmaster Amos Pell found her on the bench beneath the clock, her hair full of coal dust and small curls of sea foam that would not dry no matter how often she shook them.

Keep reading

He could not put her back in the water, for the nearest sea lay forty miles down the line. So he filled a tin bath from the water tower each morning and set it beside the bench, and she read the timetables pinned to the wall by running a finger down the columns. She learned the names of the places the trains went to. She learned that the 6:10 for Gullhaven was the only one that passed the salt marshes, and each evening she sat in the bath and watched it leave.

Nell, the signalman's girl, asked her once why she did not simply wait for a high tide to carry her home. The mermaid lifted one hand, palm turned inward, as though holding something small and bright. "I came for a ticket," she said. "My sister took the 6:10 with a ticket made of paper and a promise, and she has not sent word since."

Pell did not charge her for the ticket. He punched it himself, with a click like a shell closing. On the first frost the mermaid climbed onto the platform edge, laid her fin along the cold iron, and let the locomotive take her south. Nell says that at the next halt the carriage smelled of brine, the window was wet on the inside, and the ticket was gone.