Close view of a large dark grey scale pattern tattoo covering a shoulder and upper arm, with a small script tattoo on the chest above.

Scale pattern tattoo over shoulder and upper arm

Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm with overlapping rounded scales, shaded from near black to lighter grey with a faint teal-green tint. The scales are rendered with smooth, layered shading that gives the surface a three-dimensional, armoured look. Cropped at the chest, the photo shows the tattoo as the main subject, with a smaller script tattoo and another dark tattoo at the top edge of the frame.

Shoulder Upper arm Scale Fish scale Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The gulls have been at the bins again, and Mrs Ferris says the Mary Ellen came in heavy on Tuesday, so I expect you're sleeping better than you were in March. I'm writing this at the kitchen table because the wireless is on and I can't think over it.

Your father's old trawler, the one you swore you'd never sail on, is still tied up by the market with her hull scraped to bare wood. His notebook is in the drawer with the tide tables. I found the page where he drew the mackerel shoal the summer before he went, all those small curved marks like shingles on a roof, and underneath he'd written: count them by the light, not by the net. I never understood until last week, when I watched the boats come in at dawn and the water under the hulls turned from pewter to green, every ripple with its own edge, overlapping like armour.

Come home for the regatta. Bring the cracked oilskin and I'll stitch it properly this time, the way he showed me, one row over the next so the water can't find the seam. Ask Skipper Lund for the Saturday berth if he's still fussy about it.

Yours, with salt on my hands, Ellen