Colourful watercolour-style tattoo of Totoro holding an umbrella, with blue splashes, shown on the lower arm.

Totoro holding an umbrella in watercolour style

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon Totoro character stands under an open umbrella, outlined in bold black linework with soft, bleeding fills of orange, yellow, pink and purple. Blue ink drips and splatters around the figure and down its lower edge, imitating watercolour paint. The design fills the centre of the frame against plain pale fabric.

Forearm Totoro Umbrella Cartoon character Watercolour splashes Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mavis had the tiller in one hand and a wet rope in the other when the grey creature sat down on the lock beam, holding a black umbrella it had clearly not paid for. Rain ran off the ribs in a ring and dripped onto the cabin roof. Her father's barge, the Patience, had worked the Kennet and Avon for thirty years. She had seen herbs, dogs, a drowned piano and once an entire wedding party, but never a creature that studied the water the way a farmer studies a sky.

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'You're letting the water out too quick,' it said. Its voice came from somewhere low under its belly, like an engine heard through a wall.

'Lock keepers are supposed to say that, not beasts,' said Mavis, but she eased the paddle anyway, because the thing had a way of waiting that made arguing feel like shouting in church.

It stayed through three locks. Where the towpath ran under the alders it went slower, pressing its ears back whenever a heron lifted. At each gate it opened the umbrella a little wider and the water settled. By the last lock the rain had soaked its coat into a dark blue fringe, and the cut beneath the Patience ran as blue as ink.

At Bradford Lock it stepped off the beam, shook the umbrella once, and walked into the hedge without a sound. Mavis tied up for the night and found a single damp leaf tucked under the tiller. She still keeps it pressed in the family Bible, beside her father's name and the year the rain stopped.