Botanical flash design of a clock face wreathed in flowers and leaves, with a hummingbird above and a butterfly below, drawn in teal and brown on a cream background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Clock with hummingbird and butterfly

Botanical · Colour · Flash

A drawn tattoo design showing a clock face with Roman numerals, framed by stems, leaves and pink and peach flowers. A hummingbird hovers above the clock and a teal and brown butterfly hangs from its lower edge. The linework is fine and detailed with soft watercolour-style teal fills, set against a plain cream background.

Botanical Clock Hummingbird Butterfly Flower Leaves Roman numeral Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clockmaker of Hollin Vale kept one rule above all others: the great clock in the square was never wound on a Sunday. Let the hours wander one day in seven, he said, or they forget where they came from. His wife called this nonsense. His apprentice, a girl called Tamsin Greave, wrote it in the ledger without comment, because she had learned that the old man's nonsense was usually right.

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One October Sunday a hummingbird came down the lane from the orchards, which was wrong, since no hummingbird had ever been seen north of the river. It hung at the clock face where the Roman numerals ran round the teal enamel, and it would not go. Tamsin stood below with her hands on her hips while a brown butterfly, bigger than her palm, settled on the minute hand and folded its wings like a shut book. Every bell in the town stopped at once.

Tamsin climbed the ladder with a tin of seed and a cup of sugared water. The bird drank from the cup, then from her thumb. The butterfly lifted and went down the stems that wound around the clock like ivy, and wherever it touched a bud, a peach-coloured blossom opened. By dusk the square was full of flowers nobody could name, and the clock began to tick again, slower than before.

The old clockmaker died that winter, and the rule died with him, or so the town believed. Tamsin still does not wind the clock on Sundays. When people ask why, she says the hours need somewhere to go, and that a bird once showed her the way.