Colour tattoo of three Totoro characters and two soot sprites in a row along the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Totoro trio and soot sprites on an arm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

Three Totoro creatures stand in a line, decreasing in size from left to right, with a small white Totoro holding a leaf above its head. Two round soot sprites with dark eyes sit at the right end of the row. The figures are drawn with soft outlines and gentle shading in muted grey, blue, orange and green, and the row runs horizontally across the skin with plenty of space around it.

Forearm Totoro Soot sprite Leaf Acorn Cartoon character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The platform lamps had only just come on when you noticed the grey shape under the bench, damp and still as a boulder. Rain had been coming in sideways since Hereford, and the 17:42 was running an hour late, so you had time to look. Nobody else seemed to see it. The porter walked past twice with his lantern unlit and his eyes on the timetable board, and the pigeons kept their distance.

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The shape unfolded itself the way an armchair might if it had been waiting years for the right moment. It was bigger than you'd expected, and behind it came a smaller one, blue-grey, cradling an acorn nearly as large as its own head. Then a pale little creature no taller than your knee stepped out holding a broad green leaf above its head like an umbrella. Where the leaf's shadow fell, the rain simply stopped. Two black soot balls rolled along the gutter, gathering grit and dust, bright-eyed and busy.

When the 17:42 finally groaned into the station, the big one lowered its head towards you as if to say go on. You stepped towards the carriage door, and the pale one trotted over and held the leaf up beside you. You were dry suddenly, and warm, and the soot sprites were climbing your shoe with the eagerness of passengers who had been waiting for this train all their lives.

The doors hissed shut. Through the window you saw the platform steaming under a sky already clearing, the grey shape settling back onto its bench. On the seat beside you lay a single acorn, still warm, and when the train pulled out it rolled gently towards the window and stayed there, as if it had decided to come along.