Two hands with a colour nautical star on the back of one hand, LOVE on the knuckles, and Japanese-style dragon and koi tattoos on the arms and legs behind them.

Nautical star and Japanese sleeve on hands

Japanese · Hand · Colour · Photo

Two hands are crossed over a body covered in colour tattoos, with a traditional nautical star on the back of one hand and the word LOVE in block letters across the knuckles. Behind them, Japanese-style imagery includes a dragon, a koi fish, an oni mask, a skull and a large eye, drawn with bold outlines and solid shading. The palette is dominated by reds, oranges, greens and teals, and the dense composition fills the frame edge to edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rings are still in the biscuit tin on the passenger seat when the vicar's wife rings to say the marquee has lifted off its pegs and is currently wrapped around the lych gate. You have forty minutes and a borrowed Volvo that smells of wet dog and old chips. You take the coast road, because the A-road is closed for a lorry that has shed its load of garden gnomes, and you don't stop to wonder why anyone would transport that many gnomes on a Saturday.

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The tattoo shop sits above the chippy in Whitstable, and Mags is already waiting at the door with her sleeves pushed up and a cigarette behind one ear. Three weeks ago she inked two tiny nautical stars for the couple, one on the back of each hand, because the groom said the bride would never marry a man without a sailor's compass somewhere on him. The stars are still fresh, a little raw at the points. Mags wraps the spare pair in tissue paper, tells you the koi on the wall behind the till is not for sale, and says the oni mask over the door is her late husband's idea of a joke.

Back at the church the wind has dropped and the gnomes have been herded into a corner of the car park like guests who arrived early. The groom holds out his hand before you can speak, and there is the star, slightly smudged, the same colour as the sea. You slide the rings from the tin onto his fingers one at a time. He laughs and says that's the most dangerous thing anyone has ever handed him, and you tell him the tin was never the dangerous part.

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