Two black and grey upper arm tattoos: on the left a Totoro-style character with small soot sprites among leaves, on the right a sketched hare with arrows.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Totoro and soot sprites, and a hare with arrows

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The image is a two-panel collage of upper arm tattoos in black and grey. The left panel shows a Totoro-style character with smaller companion figures and round soot sprites set among leaves, drawn with clean outlines and light shading. The right panel shows a stylised hare with arrows crossing the arm, built from loose, sketchy linework and dense hatching across the body and ears.

Upper arm Totoro Soot sprite Leaves Hare Rabbit Arrow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

4.10 a.m. The oven has been lit since half three and the flue is making its low noise, the one Mr Okafor said was a cat purring in the chimney. I believe him now. There were soot sprites in the flue again this morning, a dozen or so, dropping out of the brickwork like dust that had decided to be interested in things. I left the rye starter at the back of the shelf by the door and they went for it straight away, the way they always go for anything warm and forgotten.

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Bramble, our bread cat who is not a cat, sat up on the proving drawer and watched them with her ears flat, as if they owed her rent. She is not a cat. I have stopped arguing about it with customers. The big grey man who collects the seeded loaf on Thursdays asked yesterday whether the bakery had a mascot, and I told him, truthfully, that it had a hare.

The hare comes to the yard gate just before first light. It is thin and grey and has been missing a tuft of ear since August, and it sits on the step eating the crusts I leave out, never taking more than it can carry. Someone put three arrows into the sycamore behind the yard years ago, and the wood still shows the marks. I think the hare has decided that is the story of its life. Every morning it leans on the gate and waits to see if I will say something. Today I did. I said, go on, then. It went.

Now the sky over the car park has gone the colour of weak tea and the first trays are cooling on the rack. The sprites have gone back up the flue, or they have decided the fresh loaves are more interesting. Either way, the bread is out, and I am going to stop writing and take it to the window before the milk van arrives.