Close photo of a bent arm with a sketchy winged creature in blue and purple on the upper arm, with script lettering and a pink rose on the forearm.

Winged creature and script on an arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A winged creature with feathered wings and a horse-like head sits on the inner upper arm, drawn in loose, sketchy linework with blue and purple shading. Handwritten script runs along the upper arm and forearm, partly cut off by the frame, and a pink rose with green stem is tattooed on the forearm. The photo is taken close up in soft indoor light against a dark fabric background.

Upper arm Forearm Horse Script Rose Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The white mare you were given to break at the stables of Lechaion has feathers folded along her shoulders like wet linen, and on the third morning she bolts down the quay so hard the gulls lift off the fish stalls in a grey-blue cloud. The grooms laugh and say she is only a horse that has eaten too much sea grass. You do not laugh. You have seen the feathers twitch when the wind comes off the water, and you have seen the bruises on the stable boys who grabbed her bridle.

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Old Nikandros, who sells rose oil from a barrow by the lighthouse steps, tells you what the stable records will not. The mare was once one of a pair of horses harnessed to a sea-god's chariot, and when the god was drowned for his pride, the harness rotted and the horses forgot the ground. "She will not be held," he says, pressing a pink petal into your palm. "Hold the rein too tight and she stays a horse. Let it slacken and she remembers."

So at dusk you walk her out to the end of the mole and unbuckle the girth. Your hands shake. The mare turns her head and looks at you with one dark eye, as if asking whether you mean to be cruel. You say nothing. You step back. She runs three strides over the wet stones, and then the air takes her, feathers opening like a fan, her flanks catching the last light the colour of bruised pewter and river mist.

In the morning the rose bush by the stable wall is bare, and the rein hangs coiled on its hook exactly where you left it. On the quay there are hoofprints leading to the edge, and beyond them only the grey, slow water, already smoothing itself over.