Two black and grey tattoos: a fine line wave on an upper arm and a dotwork palm tree within a dotted circle on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wave and palm tree tattoos on arms

Japanese · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The left panel shows a small black and grey wave with layered crests and fine shaded lines, set against soft grey shading. The right panel shows a slender palm tree with a dotted outline circle behind its trunk and a dotted horizontal line beneath, drawn with stippled dotwork and fine lines. Both images are close-cropped and in black and white, with the tattoos centred on smooth skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sea had taken three houses from the harbour of Mere that winter, and the King of Mere sent for the palm-keeper, a woman called Orla Venn who had planted the only tree on the island's north shore. "Plant it where the water ends," he told her. She laughed, because nothing grew where the water ended. She drew a circle in the sand with her heel, then a line through it, and set the sapling at its centre.

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Years passed. The palm grew thin and tall, its crown spread like a fan against the grey sky. Each morning Orla walked the line of pegs she had hammered along the shore, counting the crests as they rolled in, and chalked the count on a slate by her door. The fishermen mocked her until the autumn storm, when a great wave came up the beach and stopped short of the circle, folding white just beyond the stones and leaving the sand inside it dry.

The king came down to see for himself and asked how she had done it. Orla said she had done nothing except stand where the sea could see her every morning and not look away. The king, who had never stood anywhere long enough to be looked at, went home and ordered the harbour wall moved back to the pegs.

Some say the palm is still there, and that the circle in the sand has never washed away, though no one in Mere has ever tried to dig it up to check.

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