Close side view of a small fine line fish outline tattoo on the neck behind the ear, in black ink.

Small fish outline behind the ear

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small outline of a fish, drawn with a single thin black line, sits on the side of the neck just behind the ear. The linework is clean and unshaded, with the fish shown in profile and a forked tail. The photograph is a close, slightly warm-toned side view, with dark hair falling across the upper neck and a hand with blue nail polish at the top left.

Fine line Neck Fish Outline

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, love, the lamp's going and I'll not light another till the kettle's on. You want to hear about the fish under Hollin Vale? My nan had it from a woman who saw it with her own eyes, and she'd not lie about a thing like that.

Keep reading

It was Ada Quarmby kept the lamp room in the old drift, back when the brass check tokens hung on their hooks like a row of little church bells. Every man took his token down the shaft and hung it back up when he came out, so the overman knew who was still below. Ada took a nail one wet February and scratched a single curved line beside her own number, with a fork at the back end like a tail. The overman said it was daft and ordered it scrubbed. She scrubbed it once, and it came back the next morning, no deeper and no fainter, just there.

That spring the water came up through the Low Seam faster than the pumps could shift it. Nine men were caught in the far drift with their lamps going dim. They heard knocking along the pipework, slow and regular, and when they followed it they found a fish cut into a timber prop, pointing the way along the passage. They walked out behind that tail, one hand on the wall, until they felt the cold air of the shaft on their faces.

Next morning the overman rubbed at the mark on the lamp-room board with his thumb, out of habit more than spite. It didn't shift. He stood there a long while, then went off to see about the pumps without saying a word. Ada's token is still on its hook in the old lamp room, if you ever go and look. Mind the wet step on your way out, mind it now.