Black tribal-patterned gecko design on a white background, with a curled tail and spiral markings on the body, shown as a standalone flash design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal gecko design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A solid black gecko climbs diagonally up the frame, with its limbs spread and its long tail curling at the bottom. The body is filled with bold tribal-style bands, spirals and triangular notches in black. The design is shown in flat black ink on a plain white background with no colour or shading.

Blackwork Lizard Spiral Tail Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gecko had been climbing the bell tower of Halmarrow since the second bell, and the whole market had stopped to watch him. Old Bersa, who kept the tower clock, stood at the foot of the stones with her hands tucked into her apron and called up the same warning each time he paused. Mind the third ledge. He never minded the third ledge. He had never minded much of anything, which was why the reeve sent for him when the grain-store key slipped from the tailor's fingers and lodged in the carved coil of the gutter spout, a full man's height above the cobbles.

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His name was Oru, and his tail was the record of his service. Each black band along it was a winter he had come through in the tower's cracks, and each small triangle cut into the scales was a message he had carried for the reeve, up the wall or down it, folded small and tucked beneath a claw. Where the tail met the stone it curled round the spout, once, twice, and then he leaned out over nothing and let the key drop into his palm with the care of a man lifting an egg.

He came down slower than he had gone up. When he reached the cobbles Bersa held out her hand, and he laid the key in it. She turned it over, then took his tail between two fingers and counted the spirals the way other folk counted coins. Seven at the base, one for every reeve who had ever sent him up a wall. Then she found a new one at the very tip, pale and unfinished, that had not been there at the last feast day.

"Well," said Bersa, and she pushed the key into her apron pocket. Oru did not wait to hear what she made of it. He turned himself around, went up the nearest wall head first, and left his tail hanging to the last.