Three small fine line black tattoos on a forearm: a flame-topped figure, a faceless oval spirit and a round cat-like creature with pointed ears.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three small line tattoos on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three small single-line tattoos sit in a row across a forearm. On the left is a flame-topped figure, in the centre a faceless oval figure with dark markings for eyes and mouth, and on the right a round cat-like creature with pointed ears. The linework is thin and even, in black ink only, with no shading or colour.

Fine line Forearm Flame Spirit Character Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stove in the galley of the Marigold Rose had been lit for nineteen years and had never once gone out, which was why Cook Ruth Abernethy kept a saucepan of cold tea on the hob for it. The flame sat in the firebox like a sulky dog, flickering whenever somebody swore. Tonight it was flaring at the new deckhand, a lanky boy from Grimsby who had come aboard with a cardboard suitcase and no sense of how to hold a ladle.

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The stranger had arrived with the fog two nights back. He wore a grey coat too big for him and no face at all, only a smooth oval where a face should be, and he ate everything put in front of him without a word. Ruth fed him bread and dripping, then pilchards, then the Sunday trifle the captain had been saving. He left the bowl clean each time and a small pile of coins on the table, dull and foreign, which had gone green with salt by morning.

On the third night the cat came. It was round as a loaf and grey as the sea, with ears that stood up like the prongs of a fork, and it sat on the coal scuttle purring so loudly the pans rattled. It looked at the flame, then at the faceless man, then at Ruth, and blinked slowly. 'Oh, not you as well,' Ruth said, and the cat climbed onto the stove rail as though it owned the galley.

The storm came in the small hours. The boy went white with fright until the cat walked the length of the deck rail and every lamp on the ship came back on, one by one. When they reached harbour, the faceless man was gone and the coins were still there, bright as the day they were minted, and Ruth kept the trifle bowl ready for the next stranger.