Colour tattoo of two seahorses among green seaweed with bold black outlines, wrapping across the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Seahorses in seaweed on the ribs

Neo-trad · Ribs · Colour · Photo

Two seahorses, one blue and one pink with a purple tail, are drawn among flowing green seaweed. The linework is bold and black, with smooth colour fills and some soft shading on the bodies. The design curves diagonally across the side of the ribs, with the seaweed trailing down towards the hip.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The jar is wrapped in a tea towel, and the man carrying it has already told you twice that it is only kelp. You lift the corner of the cloth anyway. Inside, wound through a tangle of green fronds, two seahorses cling to the glass with their curled tails, one dark blue and one the colour of pink bramble. Neither moves much. You have worked this causeway crossing for eleven years and you have never seen anyone smuggle anything more pointless.

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"Live stock," he says. "For the aquarium at Skerray. They're going back to their own water on the far side, and the tide's turning, and I'm late."

The rule is simple: nothing alive crosses the sand without a permit, and the permit office shut at four. You look at the clock above the hut, then at the water sliding in silver over the ribbed sand, then at the seahorses, which have not let go of the kelp. Your father kept a marine station on this shore once, and he used to say that the seahorse is one of the few creatures where the father carries the young. Nobody told the tide about that either.

You stamp the form, write "released on the far side" in pencil, and wave him through before you can change your mind. He jogs off along the causeway with the jar held against his chest, the water already lapping at his boots. You watch until he is only a dark mark on the shining flats, then you lift the barrier and let the sea have the road back.

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