Close-up of a 3D-style tattoo on the top of a foot, showing two puzzle pieces in grey shading with one piece filled with teal mermaid scales.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Puzzle pieces with teal scales on a foot

Realism · Other · Mixed · Photo

Two interlocking puzzle pieces are tattooed on the top of a foot, with one piece shaded in grey so it appears to lift off the skin. The second piece is filled with teal scales in colour, and the grey shading gives the design a raised, dimensional look. The photograph is taken from above and centred on the tattoo, with the toes visible at the bottom of the frame.

Realism Other Puzzle piece Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The jigsaw has been on the kitchen table of the cottage at Scarrow since the November gales, and you have never once managed to finish the sea. Your aunt Morag sorted the edge pieces into a biscuit tin years ago, and the blue ones you kept in a jam jar because they never seemed to belong to the sky. Tonight the rain is hitting the window like handfuls of gravel, and the last piece you need is somewhere under the dresser with the dog's rope toy.

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Your grandfather used to say the island was a puzzle the sea kept putting back together, a bit of cliff here, a bit of harbour there, and that every winter a piece went missing and some fool had to go and find it. He was that fool once. He told you he found a lump of green glass shaped like a fin in a rockpool at Sgeir Dubh, and when he carried it home the boats came in heavy for a decade. You never quite believed him, but you kept the habit of walking the shoreline after storms.

The next morning the tide has pulled back further than anyone can remember, leaving the rocks wet and bright. You walk out past the slipway with the jar in your coat pocket. Among the wrack you find two scraps of grey plastic, one edge lifted clear of the other as though it might float off, and between them a flash of teal scales catches the sun, as if something beneath is still moving. You kneel, press them together, and they click like they have been waiting all along.

Back at the table the sea is nearly finished and the tin is full. You turn the pieces over and find nothing written on their backs, only the faint ridges where the cutter pressed. Outside, the water settles into a flat grey shine. You fit the last piece in, and for the first time since November the picture holds still.