Black and grey realism tattoo of a Roman numeral clock face inside a pyramid with birds and scrollwork on the forearm.

Clock, pyramid and birds on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo on the forearm shows a Roman numeral clock face set within a pyramid outline, with a faded sun behind the hands. A cloud of dark shading rises above the pyramid with a flock of birds flying out of it, and ornate scrollwork sits below. The shading is smooth and soft, with fine detail in the clock numerals and the pyramid's stone texture.

Realism Forearm Clock Pyramid Bird Sun Scrollwork Cloud Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ovens at Coldharbour Lane were lit before the church clock struck four, and Mabel Tennant, who had baked there since her hands were small enough to fit in a loaf tin, never trusted anyone else to light them. Above the proving shelf hung a brass clock with Roman numerals worn pale at the top, and beneath it a painted pyramid that the old owner said was there to keep the mice out of the flour. Nobody believed him.

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The winter the clock stopped, the birds came. They gathered on the chimney in a grey smudge, then rose and wheeled over the rooftops like scraps of burnt paper, and the baker's boy, Silas, swore they were the same birds that had sat on the church spire in his grandmother's time. Mabel said the clock had run slow since her mother's day and that birds were only birds. But the dough would not rise that morning, and the flour sat cold in its sacks.

Silas found the key in the drawer under the scales, wrapped in a sack cloth. He climbed the stool, fitted it to the back of the case, and turned it seven times, counting under his breath the way Mabel counted loaves. The hands jumped. Somewhere above the roof the birds came down in a single rush, and the shadow over the window lifted like a sheet shaken off a line.

When the minute hand touched the upright, a pale sun came through the glass onto the bench, and the first loaf, which Mabel had shaped without a word, was already warm. She broke it in two and gave the heel to the boy. "Wind it every morning," she said, "and the light will come to you." He did, for forty years.