Black line tattoo of overlapping fish scales on the side of a person's ribs, with a white top lifted and denim shorts held at the hip.

Scale pattern tattoo on the side ribs

Geometric · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A cropped photo of a torso and hip showing a black linework tattoo of overlapping scales that curve towards the lower left. The lines look fine to medium weight and the scales are unshaded, leaving the skin tone visible between them. The tattoo sits centrally on the frame, with a white top, denim shorts and a tiled floor around it.

Geometric Ribs Scale Fish scale Pattern Linework

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ysolde said a scale laid the wrong way sinks the whole net, so I learned to lay them with my eyes shut. Every morning at the tideworks of Mardhollow I sorted the last of the Veyle carp's armour from the brine barrels, grey lamina no bigger than a thumbnail, and set them in rows that curved down and to the left, the way the current ran past the old breakwater. Each one overlapped the one beneath, so that the whole sheet held water and let nothing through.

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The kingdom had not had a proper fishing season since the river turned to glass. The king's men said the carp had gone deep, and the tithe-clerks kept counting the empty barrels anyway, because counting was cheaper than admitting the sea had moved. I did not believe the carp had gone deep. I believed they had gone somewhere they could be followed, and that the scales knew the way, the same way a sleeper knows which stair creaks.

On the last grey morning of the month I pressed a scale into wet clay and it held the shape of the one above it, and then the one above that, until the clay was a little fish-skin hung on a nail. Ysolde came in with her shawl dripping, looked at it for a long time, and said nothing. Then she took the chalk from her apron and drew the same curve across the threshold, down and to the left, and stepped over it to fetch the kettle. By noon the tide had come up the steps and washed the line away. Nobody in Mardhollow walked that way again without looking down.