Black and grey botanical tattoo on a thigh showing a curled deer surrounded by peonies, a chrysanthemum and fern sprigs, in engraved-style hatched linework.

Deer and peonies on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A curled deer, with its head resting low and its legs folded beneath it, sits at the centre of this design. It is surrounded by peonies, a large chrysanthemum, leaves and fern sprigs, drawn in fine hatched and stippled linework that resembles engraving. The design is entirely black and grey and fills the outer and front of the thigh.

Botanical Thigh Deer Fawn Peony Chrysanthemum Fern Leaves Flower Sprig

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hedgerow above the Tweed had gone to seed by the time the cart came back for the last of the peony roots, and Agnes Hobday had stopped pretending she would be the one to dig them. Her brother Walter knelt in the wet grass with a trowel and a tin of string, cutting the clumps apart the way their father had taught them, one clean stroke per root, never a ragged tear.

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The fawn had been sheltering under the bramble since dawn. It was not yet spotted, only a soft grey shape folded in on itself with its legs tucked beneath and its nose resting low on the turf, as if the whole field had grown tired of standing. Agnes had seen the doe leave it there and go down to the burn, and she had meant to tell someone in the village, but there was always another job, another list.

Walter tied the last bundle and sat back on his heels. The chrysanthemums by the gate had come up white this year, and the ferns along the wall were thick with the little heart-shaped leaves their mother used to press between the pages of the Bible. He looked across at the fawn, then at his sister, and said nothing. Agnes understood that he meant to leave it be, and that he would tell the cart driver to wait.

They loaded the roots in silence. When the cart rolled off towards the customs post at Coldstream, Agnes stayed on the verge a while longer, watching the bramble, until the grey shape lifted its head and turned towards the burn, the way a page turns, unhurried and certain.