Black dandelion tattoo with seeds drifting away across a woman's upper back and shoulder, in a fine line botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seeds blowing across a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink dandelion seed head sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with a long curved stem running down. Small seeds break away and drift towards the top of the shoulder, drawn in fine, thin black lines with some solid areas on the seed head. The warm, slightly faded photograph shows only the back and shoulder, with dark hair falling at the top of the frame.

Botanical Fine line Shoulder Back Dandelion Seed Stem Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and leave those shutters be. They've rattled since Michaelmas and they'll rattle till the thaw, same as the coach that was meant to bring the Carlisle post. The road's gone under past the second milestone, so you'll have to make do with me and the ale, and I'll tell you about Nell Arkwright, who blew dandelion clocks off the top of Hob's Fell for forty years.

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Her husband took the drovers over the pass the winter the river froze, and he never came back down it. Nell climbed the fell every morning after that, plucked the grey clocks from the verge and blew them out over the valley, one breath each. Folk thought her soft in the head. She told them the seeds were letters. Each one carried a wish to whoever it landed on, and if you were patient, something would always come up where it fell, even if it was only a yellow flower in a ditch.

A clerk came up from the city one March with a ledger and a bad temper, looking for the Arkwright debt. He found her on the fell with her cheeks blown pink. He demanded to know what she thought she was doing. She handed him a clock and told him to blow. He puffed, and the seeds scattered in a long wavering line down the slope, and he stood there with his mouth open like a boy. He left the ledger on the inn wall that night and forgot to collect it.

Listen to the snow against the glass, all those small white seeds going nowhere in particular, and think of Nell up on the fell, blowing. Drink up, there's a bed for each of you, and mind the stair in the dark.