Fine line black elephant tattoo with ornate patterned body on the ankle, beside a black sandal strap.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small elephant tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small black elephant with a raised trunk and an ornamental pattern filling its body and ears is tattooed on the outer ankle. The linework is fine and even, with the patterning adding light and dark detail inside the outline. The photograph shows a bare foot in a black strappy sandal against a speckled light floor, with the tattoo sitting in the centre of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The elephant came off the Brighton train in a tea chest with a bent lid, and Mr Pardoe swore it was the last of the Hollins menagerie stock, though nobody in Saltcombe had ever seen a menagerie. It is no bigger than a teacup. Its trunk is up as though it has just heard the bell for breakfast, and someone in the workshop has worked the whole body with lace, little rings and diamonds that run along its ears like frost on a pane. I have kept it on the mantelpiece in the back parlour between the clock and the tin of barley sugar, because the guests keep asking whether it is real silver. It is not. It is only brass, polished on Sundays with lemon and salt.

The Mackeson girls took the back rooms this week, the ones who came for the regatta and stayed on after the rain. The younger one, Lottie, asked whether elephants remember the places they have been. I told her I did not know, but I remembered that my own father had said they never forget a kindness, which is more than can be said for lodgers. She laughed and then went quiet, and at supper she left her coins under the cruet for the boy who carries the coal.

Today the tide took the lower steps of the pier, so there is no crossing to the island until Thursday. I have spent the afternoon polishing the elephant and thinking about the tea chest. Somebody packed it carefully, with straw and a note I have never found. I will find a use for the straw.

Keep trunk raised. The kettle is on.

Yours, Edie

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