Fine line dandelion tattoo with drifting seeds on the back of a hand, next to a silver ring with a turquoise stone.

Dandelion seeds on the back of a hand

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A dandelion seed head sits near the wrist on the back of the hand, with a stem reaching up and several small seeds or shapes drifting away from it across the skin. The linework is delicate and the ink is a dark brown-black with soft shading in the seed head. The pale, plain background keeps the focus on the hand, and a silver ring with a turquoise stone sits on one finger.

Fine line Botanical Hand Dandelion Seed head Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The dandelion clock stood alone on the sea wall at Porthkell, and nobody in the town would touch it. The old women said a clock blown in the wrong month would count the boats out instead of in. Tamsin Roe did not believe that. She believed in the Gull, which had not come round the point by the turn of the tide, so on the third evening she broke the stalk and carried the grey head along the quay like a lantern.

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The wind off the bay took the seeds one at a time. Each one lifted, turned in the light, and went out over the water towards the reef. Gulls followed them down the harbour. Harrow, who had kept the lamp before the automatic one came, leaned on his doorpost and told her the trick was to count. The seeds that left were the hours the men had left to find their way home, he said, and not one more. Tamsin started counting aloud.

She counted through the cold afternoon with her palms going numb on the stalk. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. At forty-seven the last seed rose, caught the low sun, and came back over the roofs instead of going out to sea, down towards the slipway where the Gull's owner stood waiting with his cap in his hands. Tamsin stopped counting. The boat came in on the tide before the lamps were lit, and nobody asked her why the clock had gone the wrong way.

She kept the bare stalk on the windowsill after that, and the children of Porthkell learned to count to forty-seven before they learned their letters.