Pencil and ink drawing of an open pocket watch with a cracked face, Roman numerals and a hanging chain, shown as a tattoo design.

Cracked pocket watch design

Black and grey · Flash

A pocket watch with an ornate bow, chain and case is drawn in dark ink with pencil shading. The clock face shows Roman numerals and a fine minute track, and a jagged crack runs across it with a small hooded figure at the break. The drawing is in greys on a textured cream background, with the shading built up around the case edge.

Pocket watch Clock face Chain Roman numeral Crack Figure

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The old woman from the cargo ring brings you her grandfather's watch wrapped in a wool sock, and you are the only watchmaker left on Hollin Deck who still opens cases by hand. She says the movement keeps good time and always has, but the face is split right across, from the XII down past the IIII. Under the lamp you see the crack is jagged, like ice giving way on a pond. At the break stands a hooded shape no bigger than a grain of rice, one arm lifted, holding something that might be a lantern or a bell.

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Under the loupe the shape resolves. The hood is drawn with such fine strokes that the metal seems to have been engraved around her rather than over her, as if the maker had waited for the fracture and then placed her in it. Ruth says her grandfather swore the figure moved on still nights. You tell her that is what dials do when they grow old and the light is poor. You do not quite believe it. You have spent thirty years in these rooms and you know when metal has been asked a question it cannot answer.

You spend the night with the movement open on a square of felt, cleaning the escapement while the station lamps dim to amber for sleep. Near four the balance wheel stutters, then catches and runs. Through the loupe the hooded figure has lowered her arm. The crack is no wider, but the hairline at the XII has faded to nothing, as breath fogs glass and then clears.

In the morning you return the watch without mending the glass. Ruth turns it over for a long time and asks whether it is finished. You say it is, and close her fingers around the case. Leave the crack, you tell her. Someone has to keep watch at the gap, and it may as well be the one who was there first.