Black and grey traditional tattoo of a scalloped heart reading BE BRAVE, framed by two flowers and dark leaves, on a forearm.

Be brave heart with flowers on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A scalloped heart containing the words BE BRAVE in block capitals sits at the centre of the design, with two five-petalled flowers and dark shaded leaves wrapping around its edges. The bold outlines are filled with solid black and soft grey gradients, giving the heart and leaves depth against the lighter skin. The tattoo is placed on the forearm and fills most of the frame on a plain background.

Traditional Lettering Forearm Heart Flower Leaves Lettering Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The relay station had been dark for eleven days when you finally got the hatch open, and the air that rolled out smelled of burnt sugar and old oil. Mira Oduya's handwriting was on the tally slate taped to the bulkhead: three columns of ration figures, and beneath them a single line, scratched small, the way people wrote things they did not want the inspectors to find. BE BRAVE, in capitals so careful they looked stamped.

Keep reading

You were not sent to find her. The Corporation wanted the seed vault manifest and nothing else, so you moved through the cold corridors with a torch clipped to your collar, past sleeping pods furred with frost and a galley where someone had pinned a paper heart to the cupboard door. Its scalloped edge had been cut with nail scissors. Two flowers were drawn on either side in black ink, their petals shaded with the side of a pencil until they went soft as smoke.

The manifest was in the last drawer of the medical bay, under a stack of unused dressings. Beneath it lay a second sheet, a list of every colonist who had signed for the return shuttle and then been crossed out. Mira's name was not among the crossings. At the bottom she had written your designation, the one the recruitment desk had given you, and beside it a small heart with two leaves curling from its corners.

You folded both sheets into your sleeve and walked back toward the airlock. Behind you the station hummed on its failing cells. Outside, red dust was settling on the dish that had once spoken to Earth, and you understood that the message had never been meant for her. She had left it for whoever opened the hatch next, and that was you.