Colour traditional tattoo of a mermaid holding a rope, with waves, clouds, birds and a flower, on an upper arm.

Traditional mermaid with rope on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A seated mermaid with dark hair and a flower in it holds a rope, with a shell covering her chest. She sits on a red sun behind teal and green waves, with a cloud outline, small birds and a red flower with leaves below. Bold black outlines and flat red, green, yellow and pink fills give the piece a classic traditional look.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven door bangs open at quarter to four and you already have the first tray out with a folded tea towel, because Mags has told you twice that the crust goes to pieces if you wait. Through the back window the harbour is still black. A few gulls sit on the chimney pots, complaining about nothing in particular.

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Behind the proving cupboard hangs a coil of tarred rope that your gran never let anyone throw out. She used to say a woman who sat on the harbour wall at dawn had once traded it for a loaf, and that the bargain had run every morning since, one bread for one length of rope, until the coil was long enough to tie up the whole back step. Nobody in the street believed her, but nobody ever found the other end of the rope either.

This morning the flour sack is lashed with fresh cord and a scallop shell sits on the doorstep, pale as a saucer. You wrap the loaf in paper, carry it down the cobbles and along the wall, and find the water already lit red where the sun is pushing up behind the cloud bank. Something dark turns over past the breakwater, then a hand lifts and a loose length of rope comes slapping in over the stones.

You set the loaf on the wall. The gulls go quiet. By the time the sun clears the roofs the bread has gone, and the rope is wet and warm in your palm, knotted at one end the way your gran tied hers.

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