Black outline tattoo of a spotted ray with grey shading and blue bubbles and water lines, on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Spotted ray and blue bubbles on the back

Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a spotted ray swimming towards the lower right, drawn with a bold black outline and soft grey shading on its wings and body. Small black spots cover the wings, and the eye and fins are picked out in simple lines. Light blue bubbles and streaks of water rise behind the ray, set against the skin of the upper back.

Back Ray Bubble Water Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell was meant to be mending nets on the slipway, but the tide had drained off Scallow Quay and left the harbour wall pooled with light, and she was counting spots instead. Her grandfather swore the spotted ray that came in under the pier every August was the same one he had seen as a boy, and that it kept a wife in the deep water off the Mewstone. He called it Mrs Pennick, after the postmistress, because it had the same sharp, disapproving eye and the same way of turning from the bait.

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That morning Amos was out in the Brightwater, hauling crab pots off the point, and Nell had been left with the chalk and the old tin of pilchards. She saw the ray before she saw the boat. It slid beneath the hull with its wings lifting like a wet sheet on a line, and behind it the water came up in small silver coins that burst and went flat. She counted the spots along one wing, lost her place, and started again at the tail.

When the boat came in, her grandfather looked at the chalk marks on the wall and then at her. Ninety-one, she told him. He said rays never came back to the same quay twice, that the sea was too wide for that sort of sentiment. Nell only nodded and tipped the tin into the shallows, watching the fish drift down and the bubbles rise where the ray had been. Then she rubbed out the number with the heel of her hand, because the tide was coming back in and would want the wall clean.