Colour tattoo of a crouched figure within a green crescent, with pink and red lily-like flowers and a dark plume, on a shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crouched figure with lily and crescent on back

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A crouched human figure rendered in grey shading sits within a green crescent curve, with a dark feathery plume rising above it. Pink, red and orange flower petals and green lily-like stems fill the space behind, with smooth blended shading. The design sits across the upper back and shoulder blade of pale skin, with the figure's back turned towards the viewer.

Neo-trad Botanical Back Shoulder Figure Crescent Flower Lily Leaves Feather Plume Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lilies on the far bank had not opened in nine winters, and Maren Dooley knew it was her own doing for asking the moon to stay up past its hour. She had been sent to the marsh with a tin of lamp oil and a message for the heron who kept the ferry, but the heron had flown south and left the crossing to her. That was how she came to be crouched on the thin green edge of the new moon, stitching the sky shut with fishing line while the reeds creaked below.

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"What will you give me for the morning?" the moon asked. It had no face, but she could hear it turning, the way a bell turns before it rings. Maren thought of her grandmother's hat, the grey plume she had worn to every christening in the parish, and she pulled it from the lining of her coat and laid it on the curve like an offering. "Not that," said the moon. "The thing you are most ashamed of forgetting." Maren could not think of one, and so she offered the fishing line instead, and the moon accepted it with a faint, dissatisfied hum.

She worked all night with her knees pressed to the cold silver. Each stitch loosened a little more of the dark, and behind her the sky went the colour of pulled rhubarb, then orange, then the bright split pink of a shell opened on a plate. By the time the first lily pushed through the mud, the moon had grown so thin she could barely keep her balance on it, and she tore the last knot with her teeth and tumbled backwards into the reeds.

When she climbed out the moon was a pale wafer over the water, and the plume lay across her palm. It was warm, and it smelled of marsh mint and old paper. The lilies on the far bank had opened completely, every green trumpet turned towards the rising sun. Maren tucked the feather into the ferry ledger, beside the heron's unpaid fares, and went to find the oil tin.