Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a whale skeleton running from the wrist up the forearm and onto the upper arm, showing the skull, ribs, spine and tail fluke.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Whale skeleton tattoo on forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A whale skeleton is drawn along the arm, with the long jawed skull at the wrist, a row of ribs and a curved spine, and the tail fluke ending on the upper arm past the elbow. The bones are built from fine dots and light stippled shading that gives them a rounded, three-dimensional look against the skin. The tattoo is in black and grey only, and the design sits diagonally across the arm with the wearer's torso and a grey top visible behind it.

Dotwork Forearm Upper arm Whale Skeleton Ribs Spine Bone

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ribs were still in the bracken when you reached the edge of Hollin Wood, a long curve of them pale as peeled willow, and the jawbone lay at the end of the ride like a boat turned keel up. Nobody in Wickersley had seen the sea in living memory. Your grandmother said the parish had been fen once, that the water went out and left its beasts behind, and you had never believed her until now.

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You went back for the cart in the morning. Ada from the forge came with you, carrying a hook and a sack of lime, and the two of you counted vertebrae under the ferns until the light went grey through the oaks. The tail was the strangest part, its flukes spread flat on the leaf mould as if the creature had dived and never come up. Ada put her palm on the skull and said it was warm, which it could not have been, and you pretended not to hear her.

The village wanted it gone. The reeve said bones in the wood brought foxes and fever, and Mr Pryce from the mill offered two shillings a load for the lime. You hauled the ribs out one by one, each a little heavier than the last, until you reached the spine, which ran on under the roots further than any cart could follow.

On the last evening you walked the ride alone and found the spine had grown a little further, a new knuckle of pale bone pushing up through the moss where yesterday there had been only earth. You did not tell anyone. You bent and laid your hand flat on it, and it was cool and damp, the way the sea must be when you go under and the light fails above you.