Two traditional-style forearm tattoos: a red flower vase with the words Oh No, Not again and Don't, and a grey whale with the words I wonder if it'll be friends with me and Panic.

Vase and whale forearm pair with quotes

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two forearm tattoos sit side by side on a person wearing a grey shirt. The left arm shows a red-flowered vase in red, yellow and black with leaves and a small falling petal, and the right arm shows a shaded grey whale breaching beside small text. Bold outlines, solid fills and the phrases below each motif give the pair a playful, paired composition.

Traditional Forearm Flower Whale Text Quote Petal Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ivy Penhallow kept a red-flowered vase on her windowsill above the harbour, and every morning she told it the news. On the Tuesday the news was bigger than usual. A sperm whale had come up the estuary on the high tide, slid past the moored crabbers and nosed under the old granite wall, and it had stopped directly below her window to blow a fountain of seawater over the cat.

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The vase, which had never once been out of its shelf, looked down at the great grey back rising out of the harbour and let a petal drop. "Oh no," it said, "not again." The whale rolled one eye up at the window, lifted a pale fin the size of a rowing boat, and let out a long low note that rattled the teacups. Then it sank a little, thought about things, and sighed through its blowhole. Mrs Penhallow heard the sigh in her bones. "I wonder if it'll be friends with me," the whale seemed to say, though nobody on the quay could have sworn to it.

Harbourmaster Dai Trevithick came running with a coil of rope and a clipboard, shouting for a boat, a net and a priest in roughly that order. Mrs Penhallow leaned out of the window and told him to sit down on the bollard and take a breath. "Don't panic, Dai," she said. "It's only lonely." Within the hour the whale had bumped the wall twice, very gently, and the gulls had gone quiet to listen.

By evening the tide had carried it back out to sea. The vase still sat on the sill, one petal lighter, and every morning after that it leaned a little towards the water. Mrs Penhallow swore she sometimes heard, very faintly, something answer from beyond the breakwater.