Black and grey ornamental scroll and flower tattoo on the side of a torso, running from the ribs towards the hip.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black ornamental scroll tattoo on the side ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A cropped photograph of a torso from the chest to the upper thighs, with the face not shown. The subject wears a white bra, floral underwear and an open beige cardigan, and a large turquoise pendant hangs on a chain. A black and grey ornamental tattoo of scrollwork and flower-like shapes sits on the side of the torso, with shading that gives the design depth against the skin.

Ribs Scrollwork Flower Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The forge at Holm Wick had gone cold by the time Ada Verrall finished the last gate, but she kept the bellows going out of habit, the way her father had taught her, pumping air into a fire with nothing left to burn. Her work was iron and patience, and there was little call for either since the mill closed.

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The gate was ordered by old Mrs Pellow, who wanted scrolls like the ones her husband had once seen carved on a foreign church door, though he never would say which country. Ada drew them on the back of a feed sack, curl within curl, and when the metal came off the anvil the leaves pulled tight at their edges, grey and black as wet slate, with shadow pooled in the hollows of every bloom.

Mrs Pellow tried to pay her in eggs and a loaf. Ada took the coins anyway. On the first hard frost the gate swung shut on its own, the hinges sighing, and the scrolls caught the low light and threw it back as small dark flowers across the white lawn.

Ada never told anyone that she had forged the last rosette with its petals facing the house, so that anyone leaving would have to turn around to see it. Mrs Pellow found it in spring, when the rain had worn the black to silver. She left the gate open after that, and the lane smelled of wild thyme all summer.