Coloured flash design of a red-haired mermaid in a rope-edged oval frame, with two fish, an anchor and a SIREN banner, in a neo-traditional style.

Red-haired siren in an oval frame

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A red-haired mermaid with large green eyes gazes out from a rope-edged oval frame, with a teal scaled tail curling to the left and a small anchor, starfish and shell on her bodice. Two blue and yellow fish swim at the top and right of the frame, and a brown ribbon banner along the bottom reads SIREN. Bold dark outlines and smooth, saturated colour fill the design against a dark grey background with small white dots.

Neo-trad Mermaid Fish Anchor Starfish Shell Banner Rope frame Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The galley stove had been cold since Tuesday, and Bram Tolley had the kettle on it anyway because the cook's mate was asleep in the bread locker and somebody had to make the tea. I was up to my elbows in the salt pork when the skipper's daughter came down the ladder with her hair still wet from the morning wash, and she set a tin of biscuits on my bench like she was paying a debt.

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She had a carved bone button on her collar that she kept turning between finger and thumb. Her father had brought her aboard at Falmouth, she said, to learn the sea before some Bristol clerk taught her to dread it. She'd been sick over the rail three days running and never once complained, which I told her was the first sensible thing anybody aboard had done since we left port.

That afternoon the wind dropped and the whole sea went flat and bright as a pewter plate. A shoal of blue and yellow fish came sliding under the bow, and she leaned out to watch them until I hauled her back by the belt. She laughed at me. Then she pointed off the starboard quarter, where something pale and green was rising through the glare, a long curl of tail breaking the surface, and a face turned to look at us over the swell with eyes the colour of the Irish shallows.

By the time the watch changed, the thing was gone. The girl swore to the skipper it had been singing. He told her the sea was full of liars and fools, and sent her below. I still have the biscuit tin, and I still think about the way she looked back at that water, like she'd been told the sea was hers and had finally believed it.