Three clusters of teal, purple and pink mermaid scale tattoos on the outer thigh of a person lying on a white surface.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Teal and purple mermaid scales on a thigh

Thigh · Colour · Photo

Three clusters of overlapping scales are tattooed on a bare upper leg and hip, with a second cluster set lower on the thigh. The scales have dark outlines and soft shading in teal, lilac and pink, with a pale highlight on each curved edge. A black bikini bottom and bare feet are visible in the sunlit frame, with the tattoos as the main focus.

Thigh Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marren,

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The tide took the last of the herring boats out past the castle rocks this morning, and I am writing this on the back of the chandler's bill because the ink in my pot has frozen solid in the damp of the gatehouse. You asked whether the stories about the drowned court under Gullhaven were true. I went down to see for myself on Tuesday, the way you always said I would, with a lantern and a bottle of your plum brandy.

The old postern gives onto a stair that is half sea now, and at the bottom there is a chamber where the walls sweat green light. Something had been lying on the flat stone there. Scales, dozens of them, each as wide as my palm and shaped like the lids of cockle shells, heaped in overlapping rows. Teal at the root, lilac going to rose at the rims, and each one edged in a pale line like frost on a windowpane. I thought at first they were broken shell. Then one slid into the water when I breathed on it and turned over, slow as a page, and I understood they had been shed.

I took three. I know that was wrong. Mother's old brooch is nothing beside them, and I have tied one to the lantern hook where it catches every lamp I carry. Last night I dreamt the castle bell rang underwater and every fish in the bay came up to listen.

I am going back on the spring tide with a sack. Come with me, Marren. Bring the brandy.

Yours in salt, Ilse