Black and grey chrysanthemum tattoo with buds and crystal shapes on the outer thigh, drawn in a botanical style with dotwork shading.

Chrysanthemums and crystals on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large cluster of two chrysanthemum blooms sits on the outer thigh, with smaller buds, a few drooping petals and faceted crystal shapes around them. The linework is fine and dark, and the petals are built up with stippled dotwork and soft grey shading to give depth. The image is a close, well-lit crop in black and grey, with a wrist and watch visible at the edge of the frame.

Botanical Dotwork Thigh Chrysanthemum Flower Bud Crystal Petal Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada had the ovens going before the birds, and by four the shop smelled of scorched sugar and wet flour. She scored the last tray of tin loaves with her uncle's razor, each slash quick and shallow, the way he had taught her before his hands started to shake. Outside the street was still black. Only the greengrocer's security light was on across the road, and under it someone had left a crate of bronze chrysanthemums on the step.

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Mr Halloran from the flower stall found her at the back door at quarter past five, breathing hard, his coat buttoned wrong. He wanted a cake. His wife Maureen turned seventy on Sunday, and she had told him he could bring flowers or a cake but not both, because the vase would only get in the way. He had brought both anyway. He set the crate on the flour bin and asked whether anything could be done with the petals going brown at the edges.

Ada lifted a bloom and turned it under the strip light. It was tight at the centre and loose at the rim, the petals curling like the edges of old paper. She thought of the grey crystal salt in the jar by the focaccia, faceted like broken glass, and of the clear hard shards sugar makes when boiled long enough. "Leave it with me," she said, already reaching for the saucepan.

By six she had a dozen sugar petals cooling on greaseproof paper, each edge thin enough to see through, and she laid them in a spiral over a lemon sponge. Halloran watched through the hatch without speaking. When the first grey light came up over the car park, the sugar caught it and threw it back in small hard points. He laughed, once, and went out to get his van before the market opened.