Black ink flash design of a winged mermaid with a bird-like figure beside her and a patterned fishtail, shown without any body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged mermaid with patterned tail

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a mermaid with a feathered wing on one side and a long, slender bird-like figure rising on the other. The tail fins are filled with fine dotted and scrolled patterning, while the wing and bird are rendered with bold solid linework. The image is in black ink on a plain white background, centred on the figure.

Blackwork Dotwork Mermaid Wing Bird Tail Ornament Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tank cracked again on the Tuesday, a hairline run up the glass like a stitch coming undone, and Mr Vell said the show would go on regardless, which was what he said about everything now. So you carry the lamp down the back steps of the Winter Hippodrome while the company is still asleep in their caravans, and you find the heron where Dorrie left it, perched on the rail of the empty tank with its tin wings folded tight. It is made of wire and gauze and a few real feathers, and it has never once flown.

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Mira painted the tail fins herself, the summer her hands were still steady, dotting each scale with a sable brush until the whole fan of it looked like frost on a kitchen window. Dorrie did the wing and the bird in bold black strokes, because she said the crowd on the pier could not read anything finer than a gull. Nobody had asked Mira in six weeks whether she wanted to swim. The wages came later each week, in envelopes that smelled of the bank.

You unlatch the iron lid and the cold comes up off the water. Mira is already awake, her hair dark against the glass, watching you the way she watches the tide tables. You tell her the crack will hold one more season if nobody dives. She laughs, a small bubbled sound, and points at the far gate, the one that opens onto the harbour mouth, where the pier lamps are going out one by one.

By the time the first ferry sounds its horn you have the gate bolted back. Mira goes through the gap like a thrown coin and the water closes over her without a ripple. You leave the heron on its rail. When the sun comes up over the chimney stacks, its tin wings are lifted wide, and you are left holding the lamp, watching the ring of the tide settle over nothing at all.