Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a unicorn rising from a teacup of pearls and purple crystals, with sparkling stars on a pink and lilac background, on a forearm.

Unicorn in a crystal teacup on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A unicorn rises from a turquoise teacup strung with a row of white pearls, with amethyst-coloured crystal clusters spilling over the rim. A lilac cloud-shaped frame with small sparkles surrounds the figure against a pink and coral backdrop. Bold black outlines, soft shading on the unicorn's body and mane, and saturated colour give it a polished, graphic finish.

Neo-trad Forearm Unicorn Teacup Pearl Crystal Star Sparkle Mane Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hollis brought the teacup to the reunion in a shoebox lined with tissue paper. She had kept it in the back of the school kitchen cupboard since 1974, behind the tins of evaporated milk, and she said it was time somebody took it out into the light. The hall smelled of floor polish and warm sausage rolls. Dennis Trent from the year above kept asking if the unicorn was still in it, and nobody could say, because nobody had seen it come out.

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The story, as she told it over a paper cup of sherry, was plain. A girl called Ada Pringle, who wore her brother's jumpers and had no mother to speak of, found the cup when the old boilers were carted off. Pearls ran round its rim like a necklace someone had forgotten to fasten, and crystals grew in the bottom, violet as bruised plums. Ada held it up to the window that dinnertime, and a horse the colour of cream rose out of the glaze, horn first, and stepped onto the sill with one foot lifted, as if it had been waiting for someone to ask where it was going.

Ada asked it to take her somewhere she would not be laughed at. The unicorn took the sleeve of her jumper gently in its teeth and led her down the corridor, past the gym and the lost property box, to the stage where the lights had never worked. There was nothing there but dust and a single chair. Ada sat in it. When she came back, she said, she had a job at the bank and a pair of good gloves, and the unicorn was back in the teacup, asleep, with its mane gone grey at the tips.

Mrs Hollis set the cup on the trestle table beside the squash jug. Dennis leaned over and squinted. Then he laughed, because the horse was there, small and cream and sleeping among the crystals, and the whole room, which had been talking about pensions, went quiet for a moment. Mrs Hollis said that was the trouble with unicorns. They only ever came out for the ones who had stopped expecting them.