Black and grey fine line tattoo of a reclining figure with leafy foliage on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Reclining figure with foliage on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black outline shows a figure reclining with one arm extended, with a dense cluster of dark, leafy shapes forming its head or hair. The linework is simple and open in the figure, with solid black filling the foliage, and the ink is greyscale against the skin. The tattoo sits on the outer upper arm, with a grey sleeveless top and a dark background visible around it.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The alder came up through the cracks of the slipway the spring after the big storm, and by midsummer it stood taller than the chandler's roof. Nobody had planted it. Old Mairi Gorrie said it was Elspeth Rae, who had lain down on the harbour wall the night the Halcyon went out and had never got up again, because she had grown tired of waiting for the tide to bring her husband home.

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Elspeth had a habit of lying flat on the wall with one arm trailing in the water, as though she could pull a boat in by the wrist. The men laughed at her for it. The boys flicked crab shells at her hair. When the wind came round from the west and the bell at the end of the pier began knocking on its own, she simply stopped moving. The gulls settled on her shoulders, and the weed came, and then the leaves.

Now the harbourmaster cuts the low branches for firewood and the children climb the rest. Nobody has the heart to take the whole tree down. When a boat is overdue, someone walks to the bottom of the slipway, touches the nearest leaf, and goes home to set a lamp in the window, which is all the town has ever known how to do.

The Halcyon's skipper came in on a Tuesday, sunburnt and cursing, with nothing in his hold but a sack of salt and a tale about a current that had kept him circling the Skerries for three days. He walked straight past the lamps and stood under the alder, looking up into the dark leaves, and said her name as if he expected an answer. The branches moved. Nobody on the wall saw the wind do it.

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