Colour tattoo of three green corn stalks above wavy ground lines, with two small clouds and stars above them, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Corn stalks and clouds on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A row of three corn stalks with green leaves and tan cobs stands on wavy ground lines, with two small outlined clouds and scattered stars above. The bold black outlines are filled with flat green and yellow-tan colour, with simple dotted details in the sky. The design is centred on a pale, flexed arm against a brick wall and a dark green door.

Traditional Upper arm Cloud Star Plant Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lot of you, the fire won't stretch to the back benches and I'm not raising my voice for the wind. Three sisters once farmed the flat country of Harrowmere, where the rain came in sideways and the clouds sat so low a child could pull one down off the hedge. The eldest, Ysolde, had a stubborn streak and a barrow of seed corn she would not sell to the lord's men.

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The king had decreed that no crop would grow until the stars kept better time. The astronomers agreed the heavens were out of step with his calendar, so the decree was nailed to the church door. Ysolde read it, shrugged, and planted three rows of maize in the wet black ground anyway. Each morning the stalks stood up through the mist with their leaves held out like green flags, and their cobs swelled tan and sweet while the tax-men counted them on wax tablets and frowned.

Every night Ysolde walked the rows with a lantern, a dish of milk and a flat stone for the rain to run over, and she spoke to the stalks the way you would speak to a restless horse. The king's soldiers came in the third week. They said the field was an insult to the stars and must be burned by dawn. Her sisters stood at the furrows with pitchforks, and the clouds that had drifted above the hedge all week came down low over the field and stayed put, pouring rain on nothing but those three rows.

The soldiers went home wet and the king never mentioned the stars again. If you climb Harrowmere Hill on a clear night you can still see the three stalks, silver under the moon, with their small grey clouds hanging over them like hats. Mind the ground on the way down. It is wetter than it looks.