Fine line blue tattoo of two folded origami-style elephants side by side on a person's lower stomach, above the waistband of their underwear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two origami elephants on the stomach

Fine line · Other · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows a pair of elephants drawn as faceted, folded paper shapes in thin blue linework. The larger elephant sits beside a smaller one, both with angular outlines and no shading. The tattoo sits on the lower stomach above the waistband, with a navy and light blue garment and a belly button piercing visible in the frame.

Fine line Geometric Other Elephant Origami Pair Animal

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been folding the same beast for three days, and the papyrus keeps tearing at the ear. The stall smells of pitch and river mud, and the boy from the rope-walk stands at your elbow, waiting for his copy so he can take it home before his father notices the coin is gone. "Make it stand," he says. "Ours never stands."

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You cannot fold a real elephant. The ones that came over the mountains last spring were huge grey things that trumpeted at the harbour, and the dockers still speak of them as if they were gods who had lost their way. What you can do is take one square of papyrus, fold it along the lines your grandmother taught you, and make the big one first, its back a single hard ridge, its legs three creases each. Then you pinch a smaller square for the calf and tuck its trunk through the gap in the first fold, so the two of them lean together as though they have only just stopped walking.

The boy turns the small one over, finds the tail, and laughs at how sharp the corners are. He asks why the big one has no face. You tell him paper elephants have no need of faces. They only need to be remembered by whoever holds them. He pockets both and runs off towards the quay, and you watch the blue dye from the ledger ink settle into the creases of your thumb.

Later, when the lamps are lit along the water, you fold one more, smaller than the rest, and set it on the bench beside the accounts. It stands on its own. You do not yet know who will come back for it.