Pastel teal and pink drawing of an octopus with dark shaded tentacles curling around its body on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pastel octopus design with curling tentacles

Colour · Flash

A single octopus is drawn in profile with its head tilted towards the upper left and several tentacles curling and wrapping downwards and to the right. The linework is soft and the tentacles are shaded with dark navy and purple, while the body fades into pale green, teal and pink washes. The design sits alone on a plain white background with the tentacles trailing off the lower edge.

Octopus Tentacle Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The octopus is sitting on the proving shelf when you unlock the back door at ten to four, eight arms folded over a tray of rye like a man hiding a poor hand of cards. Mrs Okonedo, who has run the ovens at the Fallowgate bakery since before you could reach the flour bins, says it came in with the fish van and has been stealing sultanas ever since.

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You try to shoo it. It does not shoo. It unpeels one arm, curls it around the dough bowl, and begins to work the mixture with a slow rhythm you have never managed in twenty years: fold, press, turn, each tentacle taking its share of the weight as if the bench were a reef and the dough a stubborn tide. Its pale green skin takes on the warm yellow of the bulb above the sink, and the navy tips darken where it dusts itself with flour.

By quarter past five the kitchen smells of scorched butter and the first batch of ciabatta is out on the racks. The octopus has claimed the cooling rack by the window, arms draped down the sides like washes of paint drying on paper. You offer it a sultana. It declines, politely, by turning a blushing pink from the top of its head to the last curl at the end of its longest arm.

At half past five the back door bangs in the wind. When you step out onto the cobbles there is nothing but a wet trail running down to the harbour and, pressed into the crust of the last loaf on the rack, a neat ring of suckers like a signature. You leave it there for the first customer to find.