Black botanical fern tattoo running from the neck across the shoulder and down the upper arm, with a hand resting on the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black fern tattoo across a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a bare shoulder and upper chest showing a large black fern or leafy branch tattoo that curves from the neck over the shoulder and down the upper arm. The foliage is rendered in solid black fills with fine detailing along the leaf edges, and there is further dark ink on the arm and the hand, which rests on the chest. The image is monochrome and softly lit against a pale background.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Fern Leaves Foliage Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry from Oban only ran on Tuesdays and Fridays, so my grandmother planned every errand around it. She kept a tin of seed packets on the windowsill of the croft and told me the bracken would take the hillside back if we let it, and she was right about that and about most things. The summer I was nine she set me to clearing the path to the shieling, cutting the new fronds with a bread knife because the proper hook had gone missing in the peat. Every frond had a spine of tight black-green pinnules that shone when the rain came in sideways off the sound.

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She never called it a fern. It was the fairy's umbrella, or the old wife's hand, depending on whether she was pleased with me. When I asked why she had let it grow up the gable end of the byre, she said a thing that kept its roots in the stone would keep the stone standing, and I believed her until the autumn the wall came down in the gale anyway and she stood in the wet rubble laughing at herself.

When the boat came for me that October, the mainland solicitor wanted my signature on papers for the sale of the land. I signed at the kitchen table with the tin of seeds beside the pen. Before I left I scraped the last of the bracken spores into an envelope, and on the ferry I held it against my collarbone the whole crossing, the way you hold a letter you have not decided to post yet.