Realistic colour portrait tattoo of a man with dark swept-back hair and stubble on a forearm, with a small red rune-like symbol beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic portrait of a man on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large portrait of a man with dark, swept-back hair, stubble and a direct gaze fills most of the frame. The face is shaded with smooth gradients and fine detail in the hair, skin and dark clothing, with a warm and green-tinged background. A small red angular symbol sits at the lower right of the image.

Realism Forearm Portrait Man Hair Face Rune

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The big top came down in Shrewsbury on Tuesday, and the canvas went into the back of the lorry like wet washing, which is how I know it's finished. Mr Vaughan has sold the elephant to a farm near Oswestry and kept the portrait wagon, because he says a showman without a face on his wall is just a man with a van. You'll remember the painting Tomasz did the winter before he left, all those thin layers of glaze until the eyes seemed to follow you across the ring.

Last night I sat with it while the others loaded. The varnish has gone yellow at the corners, and in the lower right someone, I think Tomasz himself, scratched a small red sign into the paint with the tip of a brush. It's angular, like a letter from a language nobody spoke at the fairground. I asked Vaughan what it meant. He said it was a promise, then said it was a debt, then told me to stop being soft and fold the blankets.

I'm driving the wagon to Hereford tomorrow, where a man who buys old fairground paintings has offered me forty pounds. Before I go I've scraped a little varnish from that corner, just enough to see the red mark clearly. I think I'll keep the scrap in my coat. Somebody should know what it stands for, even if it turns out to be nothing.

Write to me care of the Hereford post office. I'll be in the lay-by on the A49 until the weekend.

Love, Bea