Colour tattoo of a bear head in front of a pink and teal sunset, with a blossoming branch and leaves, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bear head, sunset and branch on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A bear's head in soft, shaded linework fills the lower half of the design, with a blue-flowered branch and pale green leaves curving across its left side. Behind it sits a pink-to-orange sun with a dotted horizon of hills and a small tree, while teal and coral washes spread outwards and small dots and orbit-like lines decorate the upper right. The image shows the same arm in three overlapping views, with bold colour dominating the piece.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Bear Sunset Branch Blossom Leaves Landscape Tree Hill Orbit Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The sloe has come out on the wall below the keep, all of it at once, the way it does when the wind has been from the west for a week. I cut a branch for the kitchen table because Mr Aske said the blossom would bring damp in. He was wrong about that, as he has been about most things since spring, but I didn't say so.

The bear came up the old track on Tuesday evening, just as the sun went down behind Harrow Fell and turned the whole valley the colour of a boiled sweet. I was on the wall with the flask. She stopped at the gate, sat back on her haunches and looked at me the way you look at a neighbour who has moved a fence. Then she turned her head towards the ridge, where the one lone pine stands against the sky, and I swear she was listening to something I couldn't hear.

I didn't move. Neither did she. We sat there until the pink went out of the sky and the teal came up over the moor like water filling a bath. Then she went off down the track without a sound, just a shift in the bracken and a few petals coming down on the stones.

I have decided not to tell the parish council. They would want a fence and a man with a rifle. Instead I'm keeping the flask filled on Tuesdays, and I've left the gate open a crack. Come up at Easter if you can. Bring your good boots and don't mind the sloe, it's only blossom.

Love, Margaret