Colour traditional-style tattoo of a curved raptor claw with the words Clever Girl beneath it, with a teal and red flower above, on a forearm.

Raptor claw with Clever Girl lettering

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A curved, dinosaur-style claw in shades of orange, gold and brown sits on a red halo, with black outlines and small highlights along its length. The words CLEVER GIRL are written in thin black capitals beneath the claw, and a teal and red flower design with yellow accents appears at the upper right. The tattoo is shown on a forearm against a dark countertop with a blurred background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dessa had been lettering boat names on Corran Quay for nineteen years, and she knew the sound a brush made when the paint was too thick. This one was too thick. She thinned it with a splash of turps from the jar by her boot and tried again, the gold leaf already lifting at one corner of the transom where the damp off the harbour had got under it.

Keep reading

The boat was called Mabel's Patience, though the owner, a bent man named Ivo Trask, wanted it changed. He had bought the old crabber from a widow in Penhallow and set his heart on a new name before the sea trials. He stood with his hands deep in his coat, watching her work, and said he wanted something with teeth in it. She asked what he meant. He pointed at the bow, where a salvaged hook hung from a chain, curved and brown as stewed tea. His father had pulled it out of a wreck off the Scillies, he said, and it had caught more crab than any net on the coast.

She painted the new name in clean black capitals, then the hook beneath it in amber and ochre, the way she had seen it in his photographs. Halfway through, Ivo said, 'She'll be a clever girl, won't she, once she gets going.' Dessa agreed without looking up. The paint went on wet and bright and smelled of linseed.

When she stepped back, the afternoon was going orange over the breakwater and the words sat on the hull like a dare. Ivo ran his thumb along the lettering, leaving a smear across the G, and laughed, and said nobody would ever call the boat Mabel's Patience again. Dessa capped the tin and left the smudge where it was.

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