Traditional style flash drawing of Pikachu smiling inside a black and teal laurel wreath, scattered with small stars on a parchment background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pikachu in a laurel wreath flash

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A cartoon Pikachu with open mouth, red cheeks and large eyes sits at the centre of a wreath of dark leaves shaded in teal and black. Bold black outlines and smooth colour fills, shaded in yellow, orange and red, are typical of traditional flash. Small black stars and red marks surround the figure on a tan, speckled background, and partial shapes are visible at the edges.

Traditional Pokemon Laurel wreath Leaves Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ottilie,

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The crate came up from the Severn vaults this morning with its seal still intact, and inside, wrapped in a tea towel that smelled of machine oil, was the card you asked me to find. It is not what either of us expected. The laurel is inked in black so deep it has barely faded, and the creature in the middle grins with its mouth open, as if it has just heard a joke it already knew. Someone drew small hard stars around it, and in the corners sit two red marks that look like old runes but are probably just signatures.

I spent the afternoon reading the margin notes the Trust left in 2031. They say the card came from a parlour in Bristol where a man called Dev would put down anything a customer could describe over a pint, and that the yellow beast was the seventh copy he made that year. The first six went to people who had won something: a regional quiz, a tug-of-war at a wedding, a bet on a greyhound. The leaves, he wrote, are for a victory you can carry about without anyone asking to see the trophy.

I keep thinking about the stars. He would have needed a steady hand and a great deal of patience to place them, and nobody pays extra for stars. I suspect he put them in because he cared more for the sky than for the prize.

Hold the card to the lamp and you can still see the faint pencil guide lines beneath the ink. I am sending the scan with this letter, but the original stays here, where it belongs.

Yours in the dust, Maren