Black dotwork and linework lotus tattoo with mandala-style petals and single dots above and below, sitting on the upper back.

Dotwork lotus flower on the upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A lotus flower is drawn in black ink with a bold outline and symmetrical petals. The petals are filled with patterns of small dots, teardrop shapes and fine stippled shading that gives them depth. A single dot sits above the flower and a short line of dots descends below it, all centred on the upper back against pale skin.

Dotwork Blackwork Botanical Back Lotus Flower Dot Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At Harrowby Dene the pit had been shut since the pumps failed, and the workings filled slowly until the water came up the old shaft and stood in a round black pond behind the chapel. The children were told to keep away from it. Nobody gave a reason, except that the water kept what it was given.

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Nell Ashworth was seven when her father went down for the last time, and she took to carrying bread to the pond each morning because her mother said it was owed. She threw it in, one crust at a time, and counted the rings it made. Her mother never said who was owed. Nell didn't ask. She counted, the rings spread out and went still, and she walked home with her shoes wet.

The spring she turned eleven, something pushed up through the scum at the pond's edge. A single leaf, broad and green, then a bud closed tight as a fist. Old Hannah from the lamp room said it was a lily and lilies didn't grow in coal water. Nell said nothing. She sat on the bank every evening and watched the bud open one petal at a time, each edge ringed with tiny pale dots, like the beads on a christening gown.

On the night it fully opened the water went flat and silver, and a single dot of light hung above the bloom like a lamp left on a hook. Down in the dark, the empty cage gave one slow knock against its guide. Nell went down to the bank with a crust in her hand. She did not throw it. She held it out over the pond and waited, and the flower turned its face to her as if it had been listening all along. Then she put the bread back in her pocket and went home, and the pond stayed quiet after that.