Colour realism tattoo of a panda partly submerged in water in front of green bamboo, placed on the upper arm.

Panda and bamboo on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A giant panda sits partly submerged in still water, its head and shoulders above the surface, with its reflection rippling below. Behind it, tall green bamboo stalks rise against a pale blue background, with a grassy bank at the waterline. The shading is smooth and soft, with detailed fur, glossy greens and blue-grey reflections giving depth to the scene.

Realism Upper arm Panda Water Reflection Grass

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crate came off the Tuesday carrier with its label soaked through, and Mrs Pargeter signed for it because the driver looked too tired to argue. You dragged it up the back stairs of Seabreeze House one step at a time, while something inside sighed like a bellows. By the second landing the stencilled words THIS WAY UP had worn down to THIS WAY.

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When you prised the slats apart, a giant panda blinked at you from a nest of wet straw. It had come from a travelling show that folded somewhere near Weymouth, and nobody had bothered to write down its name. Mrs Pargeter wanted it gone by Saturday. The panda walked straight past you, down the yard, and lowered itself into the rain butt beside the bins, where the water rose to its shoulders and it sat very still, watching the sky in the surface as though it were the only thing worth looking at.

You tried everything the market had. Carrots, which it ignored. Two sad cabbages, which it sniffed and rejected. Eventually you came back with an armful of cane a fisherman had propped against his shed, and laid it along the rim. The panda reached out a paw and drew one stalk into the water as delicately as a clerk turning a page. Its reflection bent with it, green and black, and for a moment the yard seemed to hold a small grove.

On Saturday the guests came down to breakfast to find the butt empty. Wet prints crossed the flagstones, past the bins, over the promenade wall and down the shingle to where the tide was coming in. Out beyond the breakwater a dark head bobbed on the grey water, a green stalk turning slowly beside it, and Mrs Pargeter, who had not been surprised in thirty years, said nothing at all.