Colour tattoo of two lavender dolphins meeting nose to nose above turquoise waves, one wearing a pink flower and the other a green lei, on the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two dolphins nose to nose above waves

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

Two stylised dolphins face each other with their noses touching, forming a heart shape above a cluster of stylised waves. The left dolphin wears a pink hibiscus-style flower and the right dolphin wears a green lei. Bold dark outlines, soft shading and lavender, blue and teal ink give the piece a bright, cartoon-like finish.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been watching the boy by the bandstand for three songs, and he has been watching the hibiscus you pinned to your shoulder before the tea dance, the one the florist on Marine Parade swore would outlast the night. Ruby from the cloakroom says his name is Tomas and that he crews the ferry to Brackley Point with his uncle. She says it the way people announce a verdict.

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When the band slides into the slow number, he crosses the sprung floor with a lei of green glass beads strung on fishing line, bought off a stall for the Hawaiian Night that the council cancelled. He holds it out with both hands, as if it might bite. 'Only fair,' he says, 'you match the flower and I match the lei.' You tell him the beads are wrong for a Thursday in October, and he says the sea is wrong for a Thursday too, and you cannot argue with that, so you let him fasten it at your collar.

You dance until the ballroom lights are turned down to the amber strip above the bar, and he tells you about two dolphins that came in on the tide last summer and nosed each other by the breakwater for a whole afternoon while the fishermen shouted at them to clear off. His uncle swore they were sweethearts. You do not know if that is true, and Tomas says he does not much care, so long as they came back the next day.

At closing time you walk out along the pier with the beads cool against your neck. Below the lamps two grey shapes surface side by side, heads bowed together like a question about to be answered, and you decide the hibiscus can stay pinned exactly where it is.

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