Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of a bat with leaves and a daisy across the shoulder and upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bat and leaves on a shoulder

Dotwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large bat with spread wings sits over the shoulder and upper chest, surrounded by slender leaves and a daisy at the left edge. The linework is loose and sketchy, with dotwork and hatched strokes building the shading on the body and wings. The tattoo is entirely black and grey, and the composition wraps around the shoulder curve.

Dotwork Botanical Shoulder Bat Leaves Daisy Flower Wing Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bat had been hanging from the top shelf of the proving cupboard since before Kit unlocked the back door, folded into itself like a dropped glove. Dilys found it when she reached past for the bread tins, and she stood very still with her hand in the warm air until it shifted and its wings opened, slow as a fan unfolding, veined and ragged at the edges like a bay leaf held up to the light.

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"Get the tea towel," Kit said, already reaching for it. "No," Dilys said. "It's only lost. Look at it, it's more frightened of us." She had grown up in this bakery above her father's ovens, and her mother had always said that anything which came in before the first batch was out belonged to the morning and should be let go with a loaf. Kit rolled his eyes, but he set the tea towel down and opened the yard door a crack, letting in the smell of wet slate and the bay tree by the gate.

The bat dropped from the shelf in a loose fall, then caught itself and looped low over the cooling racks. It skimmed the flour bins, the rows of tins, the windowsill where three jam jars held daisies Dilys had picked from the verge on Tuesday. Its shadow swept across the scored tops of the morning's loaves, and each time it passed, the ovens ticked and settled, the sky beyond the glass going from black to the colour of wet pewter.

When it came round to the door again, she stepped aside and let it go. It went out in a crooked line, caught the air above the yard, and settled on the bay tree, hanging there with its wings half open against the leaves. Dilys went back to her bench and began to shape the next batch. When the first van rattled up the cobbles, the only trace left inside was a faint smudge of flour on the sill, shaped like the edge of a wing.