Three black turtle tattoos on a forearm, above a black and yellow cord bracelet with a metal hook clasp.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three turtles on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three solid black turtle silhouettes are tattooed on the inner forearm, each showing a domed shell with a hexagonal pattern and a small head and flippers. The turtles are placed at different angles and sizes, with clean edges and no shading beyond the shell pattern. The background is blurred garden bed with grass, and a wrist bracelet with yellow and black cord and a hook clasp sits below the tattoos.

Forearm Turtle Sea turtle Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire is poor and my voice is older than the wick. You want the turtles? Brother Aldous had them carved over the infirmary door before I was born, three of them, and each one a different size, because the old abbot said no creature that travels the whole sea comes home the same size it left.

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In the year the tide took the causeway, a boy from the salt pans came up to the gate with a cracked shell wrapped in his shirt. He had found it on the sand below the seawall, still breathing, the dome of it scored with the marks of a hundred hard years. Brother Cuthwin, who kept the bees and never once lost his temper, took the boy in and set the shell on the cloister step where the sun could reach it.

Three nights later the other two came up the shingle out of the dark, following the boy's lantern as though they had been invited. Nobody could say which was the mother and which the friend. They lay down beside the first and did not stir for a week, and the brothers took turns sitting with them, saying the hours under their breath so the creatures would know they were not alone in the cold.

On the eighth morning the tide came in grey and high, and the three of them walked, slow as bishops, back down into the water. The boy stood on the wall until the sea had closed over their shells. That afternoon Cuthwin pressed his thumb to the lintel and carved the third turtle, a little smaller than the others, because he said the boy would grow and the turtle would go on being the age it was.