Colour Neo-trad tattoo of an orange octopus wrapped around an anchor and dagger, on the side of a thigh and hip.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Orange octopus and anchor on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A large orange octopus with purple tentacles and suckers wraps around a dagger-pierced anchor. The octopus has shaded red and orange tones with raised bubble highlights, and its tentacles curl across the thigh and hip. The colour is bold and saturated against a plain background of skin and blue medical drapes.

Neo-trad Thigh Octopus Tentacle Anchor Dagger Bubble Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The octopus had been in the dory's bilge since dawn, and Mattie Crane swore it counted the rungs of the ladder every time she passed. Nobody aboard the Brightwater wanted it killed. Old Henry said a creature that clever was owed a fair hearing, so we kept it in a tub of seawater under the galley hatch and fed it crab shells until the cook threatened to boil it down for stock.

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The trouble came off Scarrow Head in a northerly blow. The anchor chain parted at the shackle and the iron went over the side, and I watched the octopus climb out of its tub, cross the wet deck on eight grey arms, and go down the bow after it. When we hauled up the dragging anchor the next morning, the creature was still wrapped round the stock, its suckers pale and patient, and the blade of the old boarding dagger was lodged in the iron like a splinter.

We never could work out whether it had been saving the thing or simply holding on to something it liked. Henry said the sea keeps its own accounts. The skipper, who had no patience for fables, cut the octopus loose at the rail, and we watched it flush orange and violet as it hit the water, bubbles rising behind it like a string of pearls.

For years after, no one on the Brightwater would say the word octopus aboard. Whenever a boat came back into harbour with its anchor still in place, somebody would tap the bow twice and say, paid up.