Small whale tattoo in blue and grey ink on a forearm near the wrist, photographed against a dark background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small whale on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A small whale is tattooed on the forearm near the wrist, shown in profile with a dark blue back and a pale underside. The outline is simple and the body is mostly solid fill, with little visible shading. The arm rests diagonally across a plain pale skin area, with the hand visible at the right edge against a black background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself by the fire, love, and mind the cat, she's been sleeping on the sea chest since Easter. You'll want to hear about the little whale, the one that came in under the harbour wall the winter the Pardoes lost their boat. Everyone in Saltcombe knows the tale, but none of them tell it right, so I'll give it you proper while the kettle makes up its mind.

Keep reading

Hollis Pardoe was nineteen and couldn't swim a stroke, which didn't stop him rowing out past the breakwater every dusk to sit with his lamp and count the gulls. One evening the water went flat as a plate and something came up beside the skiff, dark blue on top and white underneath, no longer than the oars. It didn't breach. It just rolled an eye at him, the way my late husband used to look at the price of coal, and it stayed there, humming through its blowhole, until the lamp guttered.

He told his mother the next morning and she laughed him out of the kitchen. But the tide brought a ribbon of kelp to the step that same week, and tangled in it was a bone no longer than a man's finger, notched three times like a tally. Hollis wore it on a string round his wrist for the rest of his life. When he finally rowed out past the breakwater for good, at eighty-one, the whale was waiting for him. Some say it swam him out. I say a small whale knows the way home better than any of us.

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