Blue shaded flash design of two dolphins curving head to tail into a circle, with one tail at the top and one at the bottom.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two dolphins forming a circle

Colour · Flash

The design shows two dolphins arranged head to tail so their bodies form a loose circle, with their tail fins extending above and below. The dolphins are rendered with smooth gradient shading that moves from deep blue on one to pale blue and white on the other, with small pale markings on their heads and bodies. The plain white background isolates the artwork and keeps the composition centred and symmetrical.

Dolphin Circle Ring Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now you'll want to hear the one about the Harrow Sound winter, when the ice came in so thick the gulls walked on it. Pass the poker to Dorcas there, she's been eyeing it since the soup. The fishing boats were all hauled up, and three men were still out past the skerries when the snow came down like a sheet thrown over a bed.

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Everyone in Skerrow knew the two dolphins that worked the channel each summer. One was dark as a mussel shell, the other pale as candle wax, and they'd chase each other's tails until they made a ring of water you could row a boat through. Old Ned Pargeter swore they were the same pair his grandfather saw, and that they never once missed a turn. So when the men didn't come back by dusk, the wives stood on the quay with lanterns and waited for something to happen.

Nothing did, for a long hour. Then the water inside the harbour mouth began to churn, dark then pale, dark then pale, going round and round until the ice cracked open in a neat circle. The dolphins kept at it, breathing hard through their blowholes, until the channel stayed open wide enough for a keel. The three men rowed through on the last of their strength, and they said the pale one looked back at them, as if counting.

The ice closed again by morning, of course. It always does. But the wives still leave a bucket of herring on the quay each New Year, and nobody asks who eats it. Now, Dorcas, that's your poker back. Mind you don't stir the fire too hard, or the snow will think you're asking it in.