Black and grey tattoo of a patterned elephant with its trunk raised, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Ornate elephant on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a large ornate elephant tattoo on the upper back, near the shoulder blade, of a person with long dark wavy hair. The elephant walks to the left with its trunk raised, and its body, legs and trunk are filled with dense decorative patterns, scrolls and dotted detail. The work is rendered in black and grey with soft shading on the body and bold outlines, set against warm, softly lit skin.

Back Elephant Ornament Pattern Scroll Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The morning of the Rain Procession, the Queen's elephant had not yet been dressed, and the chief painter had lost his nerve. He sat on an upturned crate in the stable yard of Ysmarre, turning a brush over and over in his fingers while the beast swayed behind him and blew dust across the cobbles. I was nineteen and had only ever painted cloth. 'Pallu will not mind your hands,' he said. 'He minds my hesitation.'

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So I began at the trunk, because the old men said the rain was born there. I drew coils of scroll the way my mother drew lace on the water-jars, one curl folding into the next, and I counted dots as I went: seven for the clouds that came in spring, nine for the ones that came too late. Pallu lowered his great head and breathed warm air on my shoulder. Nobody had told me he would be warm. The ink was thick and smelled of oak galls and vinegar, and when it ran out at his foreleg I thinned soot with river water and finished the legs in grey.

By dusk I had covered his flank in lozenges and little curling suns, and his legs in bands like the rings of a felled tree. The chief painter came out with a lantern, looked for a long while, and said nothing. Then he pointed with his chin at the tail, where I had left a bare tuft of hair. 'Every elephant keeps one place for himself,' he said. 'Leave it.' I had not meant to leave it. I had simply run out of patience.

At dawn the procession moved out through the eastern gate, the elephant walking left toward the river with his trunk raised as if to catch the first drops. The crowd cried out at the patterns, and the Queen asked who had painted him. Nobody answered her. When the rain came in the afternoon it ran off the grey places first, and I watched the soot dots wash pale while the black tuft at the end of his tail stayed dark and dry.