Black and grey realism full arm sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and forearm, showing a Roman numeral clock face, gears, a key, a rose and a pocket watch.

Clock, rose and feather full sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Four views of a full arm sleeve show a large Roman numeral clock face across the upper arm, with hands and exposed gears above. Below, a key, a rose and a pocket watch sit on the forearm, with a feather and lines of script on the lower arm. The work is in black and grey, with smooth shading, soft highlights and strong contrast in the clock and metal details.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Shoulder Clock Roman numeral Gear Key Rose Pocket watch Feather Script Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas had carried the iron key up the pass three times that winter, and each time the snow had shut behind him before he reached the inn at Carrow Col. This time he kept it inside his coat, wrapped in oilcloth against his ribs. The chapel clock at the summit had stood at a quarter to four since his grandfather's day, and the valley people said the key would start it again if anyone had the nerve to climb the last hundred steps in the dark.

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At the inn, Ilse, the landlord's widow, took the key and turned it over in her palm. She did not ask his name. She set a tin cup on the sill, where a rose cutting had been dying since autumn, its petals grey as ash. "It waits for the same thing as the clock," she said. "Somebody to finish what was started."

He climbed at dusk with a lantern. A raven came down off the rocks and walked beside him, and at the top it left a black feather on the chapel step. Inside, brass wheels hung from the beams, furred with frost, and the great hands lay still over a face where the Roman numerals had faded to shadows. Tomas fitted the key into the case beneath the dial and turned it. The wheels shuddered, then began to move, one tooth catching the next, until the bell in the tower spoke and the valley below answered it, bell after bell, all the way down to the lake.

He came back over the pass in the morning with the sun on the snow. In the inn, the tin cup on the sill held a rose, red at the heart, its stem green. Ilse took the feather from his hand and tucked it into the band of her apron without a word. Nobody in Carrow Col ever asked what the key had cost, and the pass has stayed open ever since.