Black and grey tribal line design of a mermaid riding a large fish decorated with sun motifs, paw prints and a small lion, shown without any body placement.

Tribal fish and mermaid design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey drawing of a mermaid with a crown, holding a sprig, whose tail curls down into a fish body filled with tribal-style patterns. The fish carries a sun motif, swirling ornamental bands, a small heraldic lion and a column of paw prints along the tail. Bold solid black shapes and fine grey highlights on a plain white background make up the composition.

Blackwork Mermaid Fish Tribal Sun Paw print Lion Crown Sprig

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gulls have had the bait again, and the brass lion on the harbour wall has gone green about the mouth, so you carry the lamp down the slip in the grey before the tide turns. Your father always said nothing in Porthkell came up the steps before the sun did. You are not sure he meant the sun on the water, or the one painted on the bow of the Mary Ruth, faded to the colour of old teeth.

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She is sitting on the bottom step where the weed begins, a crown of wet shells on her head and a sprig of barley across her knees like a sceptre she has no use for. Her tail runs down into the sea in scales the colour of slate, and along the fin there are prints pressed into the weed, as if a dog had walked up out of the water and changed its mind. "You are late," she says. "The bread is in the bucket," you say, because that is what you have always said, and she laughs, and the sound goes out over the harbour like a bell with a crack in it.

Every morning for a month you have brought the heel of the loaf, and every morning she has asked for the same thing: the name of the boat that went down off the Pillar in the winter, the one nobody has said aloud since. You never tell her. You have started to think she already knows and only wants to hear you say it.

Today you set the lamp down, sit beside her on the cold stone, and tell her. The water goes still around her tail. She lifts the barley, snaps the head off with one nail, and drops the grains into the sea, where they drift out towards the Mary Ruth's bones like small gold coins paying a debt. "There," she says. "Now you can go home and eat your own breakfast."