Black and grey fine line design of a dandelion clock releasing seeds towards two birds, with the words this too shall pass written along the stem.

Dandelion seeds with script stem design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a dandelion clock at the base, with its seeds drifting upwards and breaking into small fragments, and two birds in flight at the top right. The stem curves down the design and carries the handwritten words this too shall pass in a thin script. The linework is fine and detailed, with shaded grey on the seed head and clean white space around the composition.

Fine line Dandelion Seed Bird Script Stem Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the kettle's not boiled and the wind won't drop till morning, so you may as well hear this. Mairi Gillies had a son called Calum who went to sea at sixteen on the ferry from Oban and came back at twenty with a grey face and no words for what he'd seen. For a year he sat on the harbour wall and counted gulls.

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Then one June the dandelions came up thick along the machair, and his mother took him out to see them. She picked a clock, the way you do, and held it under his chin. Blow, she said. Tell the thing you're carrying and blow it off. He said he couldn't think of anything worth the breath. So she blew, and the seeds went up in a hundred little parachutes, and each one split apart in the air before it reached the fence, breaking into threads finer than hair until there was nothing left but light.

Calum laughed for the first time in a year. Then he cried, which was better.

Now, the old folk on this island had a saying for that sort of thing, and they'd carve it on the lintels of their croft doors. This too shall pass. Mind, it never says when, nor which way it goes. Two crows came over the dunes that evening, then a pair of swallows, and Calum said they were the seeds finally getting their wings. His mother said no, they were only birds, and that was the lovely part. Go on, then. Your tea's gone cold.