Black and white photo of a small solid black elephant silhouette tattoo with raised trunk on the forearm, in a blackwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small elephant silhouette on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black elephant with its trunk raised sits on the outer forearm, shown as a flat silhouette with no interior detail. The photograph is black and white, with a denim sleeve at the top of the frame and a hand with dark nail polish resting at the left edge. The elephant is centred in the lower right of the image against plain skin.

Blackwork Forearm Elephant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the top step, it's worn through where my father used to stand and curse the gulls. Sit by the lamp, the glass holds the warmth. You've heard the tale about the ship with the travelling show, but you've not heard it from the man who was holding the lantern, so listen close. The Marigold went onto the Scar in the autumn of '93 with a menagerie aboard, and the crew were drowned or dragged off by the surf before the boats could fight their way in.

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The only one who came up the shingle on her own was an old cow elephant the bills called Hester. She stood at the foot of the cliff path with the sea running off her flanks, and she would not go a yard further than the light. My mother gave her bread and a bucket of mash, and every night after that she came to the wall below the tower and lifted her trunk straight up, the way you see it drawn on the posters, and sounded at the lamp as if the glass owed her an answer.

In the February fog the lamp clouded and the mechanism stuck. I went down the stairs three at a time with the paraffin can, and by the time I had the wick lit the boats were out on the bay with no mark to steer by. We heard nothing but the water. Then from the shingle came that great brass trumpet of a call, once, twice, and the first boat turned for it and came in safe on the stones. Hester stood at the water's edge, trunk up, black as a cut-out against the white of the surf.

Every man in that boat lived to be old, and not one of them ever again called her a beast. Hester died the winter after, and they buried her under the headland where the grass is greenest. When the lamp swings round on a clear night you can still make out her shape on the rock if you look for it, trunk raised, the way she always stood.