Colour neo-traditional tattoo of Totoro, soot sprites, Calcifer and a red Mononoke-style mask within a teal and gold ornate frame, on the thigh.

Totoro and Studio Ghibli characters in an Art Nouveau frame

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A large colour tattoo of Totoro sits at the centre, perched on a branch, with two soot sprites, a small child in a red hat, a flame spirit and a red animal mask arranged around him. A gold scrolled Art Nouveau frame with white pearl beads surrounds the scene, with teal and blue behind the figures. Bold black outlines, flat fills and soft shading define the figures, and the photo is shown both full length and as a close crop.

Neo-trad Thigh Totoro Soot sprite Mask Child Pearl Frame Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now then, sit down where the peat smoke can reach you, because this is the one about the wood above Kelp Cove and the grey creature who lived in the hollow of the oldest oak. My grandmother swore she saw him the summer the boats came in late. She said he was as big as a byre and as patient as the tide, and he sat on a branch with his great feet dangling like a child waiting for a bus that never comes.

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The island children used to leave him things. A handful of barley, a hazelnut balanced on a flat stone, once a brass button off a drowned man's coat. Nobody asked him for anything. He simply let the little black soot-balls scurry down from the rafters of the old mill to fetch what was left, and they came back with their wide white eyes full of gossip, while the fire spirit in the mill hearth grumbled that they were making a mess of the ash.

Then the spring the mill roof came down, a girl in a red hat walked up the hill alone with a lantern made from a jam jar. She didn't cry. She asked the great grey thing whether he could find her mother, who had gone into the fog to fetch a lamb back and had not returned. He blinked slowly and did not answer, but the red-masked guardian of the far pines came out of the bracken with its hair bristling and led her down to the shore by the path the sheep use.

The mother was sitting on the slipway, shaking seawater from her boots, and when she saw the lantern she laughed as if she had known all along. That, my girl, is why you still leave barley on the stone, even now the mill is gone and the roof is only a rumour in the village.