Black tribal-style flash design of two dolphins leaping above curling swirls and water splashes, with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two dolphins with tribal swirls

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows two dolphins arching upwards, one above the other, with their bodies outlined in bold black lines and filled with solid black areas. Curling tribal-style swirls and small splash shapes sit beneath them, suggesting waves. The image is a flat black drawing on a white background with no shading or colour.

Blackwork Dolphin Swirl Wave Water Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad swore the two dolphins had been herding us since the Gannet Bank, one arcing clear of the bow and the other always a length behind, as if somebody had sent them to see us home. Nobody believed him. We had lost four pots in the blow, the mainsail was patched with a feed sack, and Tom had been sulking since dawn about his lobsters, so when Dad said it again over the tea flask, Tom only pulled his hat lower.

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The water kept coming up in those curling shapes, long black backs rising out of the swell and folding over themselves like the ribbons on Gran's Sunday shawl. Spray spattered the wheelhouse glass and ran in threads down the pane. Each time the big one breached it hung in the air a moment, pale belly turning, and then the sea took it back with a sound like someone pouring out a bucket. I kept my hand on the tiller and counted them without meaning to. Eleven times between the bank and the Mouse Rock.

At the harbour mouth they peeled away together, one turning south, the other staying close to the hull until the last of the walls went past. Tom leaned over the rail, quiet for once. The water where they had been was already smoothing itself flat, but small splash marks still spread across it in rings that tangled and collided like the lines Gran used to draw in the flour on the kitchen table.

We tied up at the slipway with the gulls shouting. Dad climbed out first, stiff as a gate, and looked back at the sea without a word. Then he said, to nobody in particular, that he would be buying Tom a new set of pots on Monday, and Tom, who had been waiting all day to hear something like that, didn't argue.