Black and grey tattoo of a female silhouette with flowing swirled hair and a small flower, with curling linework, on the side of the torso.

Swirling silhouette figure with flower

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A stylised female profile silhouette with long, windswept hair and a small flower tucked behind the ear, outlined in bold black linework. Flowing spirals and curls form the body and trailing lines below, with soft grey and muted red-brown shading inside the swirls. The design runs vertically across the skin, with the figure's hair at the top and the curling tail sweeping down the frame.

Ribs Woman Silhouette Hair Flower Swirl Curl Figure Profile

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My grandmother kept the tale of Morwen in the same drawer as her sea-glass, and she only took it out when the wind came round to the south-west. Morwen was a sea-wife who lived in the spirals under the cliff at Porthcarrow, and when the fishermen ventured too far she would lift her hair off the water and blow them home.

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The year I turned fifteen, my brother Tom took the punt out past the Gull Rock without telling anyone, and the sky went the colour of pewter. I ran down to the cove with my grandmother's shawl over my head and found her already there, barefoot on the shingle, humming a tune that had no start or end. She pressed a sea-pink into my hand and told me to tuck it behind my ear, the way the sea-wives did, so the water would know whose kin I was.

I did not believe a word of it until I saw the boat come round the point on a curl of white, the wake bending back on itself like a tail, Tom standing in the stern with his arms raised. Morwen's hair streamed out over the bay, grey and silver, and for the length of a breath I could see the shape of her face in the spray. Then the swell dropped and there was only foam, and my brother was rowing hard, laughing and crying, with the flower still damp in my fist.

My grandmother took the sea-pink back that evening, pressed it between the pages of her almanac, and said the wind always wanted paying. I never asked her what the price was. She put the almanac back in the drawer beside the glass, and I heard her humming the tune again all the way up the cliff path.