Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a columnar cactus with spines in a striped clay pot, on the calf.

Cactus in a pot on a calf

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A columnar cactus with long curved spines sits on top of a clay flowerpot. The cactus body is built from fine stippled dots for shading, with bold black outlines around the ribs and spines. The pot uses short horizontal hatch marks for texture and is shown in black and grey against a blurred neutral background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Pring kept the cactus on the ticket office sill at Hollin Cross, where the wind came up off the moor and rattled the glass each time the 4.10 went through without stopping. It stood in a red clay pot with a chip out of the rim, tall and grey-green, and the porters said it had been there longer than the signal box.

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Nobody watered it but Ada, and only on Thursdays, when the goods train brought the post. Its spines grew out in long curved threads that caught the lamplight. Mr Tolley, the station master, said a plant that wanted so little was a waste of a sill that could hold a kettle. Ada said the cactus had come through two winters without a drop of rain and had never once complained about the draught, so he could stop talking about kettles.

In the February of the great frost the pipes under the platform burst and the lamp room flooded to the sleepers. The line was shut for nine days. When the first engine crept in, steaming and cautious, Mr Tolley climbed up to the office and found the pot turned so its spines faced the door, and the water mark on the wall stopped a hand's breadth below the sill.

Ada never explained it. She only said a station needed one thing that would outlast the timetable. Mr Tolley took the hint and bought a second pot for the waiting room, and the 4.10 still didn't stop.

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