Close view of a red dragon coiled around a red rose on a woman's upper arm and shoulder, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red dragon and rose on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A red dragon with spread wings wraps around a red rose with green leaves, and its tail curls into a loop below the wings. The linework is bold, with shading in deep reds that gives the wings and rose petals some depth. The tattoo sits on the upper arm and shoulder, cropped tightly so the subject's face is not shown.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rope burned through my glove again this morning, so forgive the smudge on this page. We pulled the nets at four off the Dogger and came up with more dogfish than cod, and Tomas swore he saw something red turning under the hull before the winch took the strain. You know how he talks after the second bottle of Bovril. I told him to mind his feet.

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Your nan would have laughed at me. She always said the sea keeps a lodger, and if you feed it properly it leaves the boats alone. I thought that was her nonsense until the Rosalind went down by the Shoal in March and the Hope Ellen came back with nobody lost but her wheelhouse. Mick Corrigan says a red dragon came up off the bow that night, wings like wet sails, coiled round a rose that was lit from inside, and it looked at the boat the way a dog looks at a dropped sandwich. Mick also says he saw a saint on the mizzen, so take it with salt.

Here is the part I keep turning over. Last Tuesday the dragon's tail was in the net. Not a rope, Annie, a tail, long and tapering, looped twice through the mesh as if it had been tied there on purpose. I cut it free with the bait knife and it slid off the deck back into the water with no splash at all. The next morning the rose was waiting for me in the hold, pinned to the net with a single thorn, petals still dripping. I have pressed it in the back of the almanac.

So when you ask me to come ashore for good, I am thinking about it. The harbour master wants the mooring fees and the boat wants a new engine. I will bring the rose home for you, and you can tell me whether a tail like that counts as a warning or a wedding gift. Kiss the girls for me. Dad.

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