Colour tattoo of a green sea turtle with pink and purple plumeria flowers and blue wave shading on the outer thigh, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sea turtle and plumeria on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A green sea turtle swims across the centre of the design, with pink and violet plumeria flowers clustered around its shell and flippers. Soft blue and teal wash strokes behind the turtle suggest water, and the scales and spotted flipper are shaded with smooth gradients and bold black outlines. Bright blues, greens and pinks dominate the image, which is taken straight on against the skin of the upper thigh.

Neo-trad Thigh Sea turtle Turtle Plumeria Flower Wave Ocean Water

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The turtle came back to the shallows off the slipway on Tuesday, the big old one with the chipped rear flipper that you named Mrs Pennock when you were nine. I watched her from the wall with a cup of tea going cold in my hand, the way you used to, and I thought you would want to hear it from me before the boys from the ferry got their cameras out.

Mum's frangipani by the kitchen door has come into flower again, pink at the edges and white in the middle, dropping onto the step faster than I can sweep. I've been pressing them in the big atlas, the one with the broken spine, because you always said flowers keep better pressed between the sea charts. I hope that's still true where you are.

The guesthouse is full for the summer, which means Mr Halloran has taken your room and complains about the damp in the same voice you used to. I told him the damp was the sea's way of remembering you. He didn't laugh, so I suppose I need more practice at jokes.

I've kept the turtle ledger going like you asked. Date, time, how many flippers she lifts when the tide turns. Tuesday, six lifts, the last one slow. I've written your initials beside it, as the rules say, and I'll keep doing it until you come home to sign underneath them yourself.

Love, Nell