Black and grey dragonfly tattoo framed by ornate scrollwork and dotwork geometric patterns across the neck, shoulders and chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragonfly and scrollwork across neck and chest

Dotwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A large upper body tattoo covers the neck, shoulders and chest, with a shaded dragonfly at the centre surrounded by symmetrical scrolling linework. Dotwork and fine grid patterns fill the neck and shoulders, and a smaller insect appears low on the chest. The image is set against a plain black background, with the hands resting over the chest and the subject's face cropped out of frame.

Dotwork Blackwork Geometric Neck Chest Back Shoulder Dragonfly Scrollwork Geometric pattern Dotwork Insect Ornamental

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dough had been proving since two, and Margit Oduya had her hands in the flour when the first van hissed to a stop outside the shutters. She did not look up. Her nephew Tobi was late again, which meant she would be piping the cardamom knots herself, the way her mother had, with a stiff icing bag and a steady wrist.

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The lane was still black. Above the ovens the extractor fan ticked, and along the steel bench the trays lay in rows like pages of a ledger: rye, sourdough, a dozen brioche wheels glazed the colour of old varnish. On the wall hung a pencil sketch her mother had pinned up decades ago, a dragonfly with wings like panes of glass, and around it a border of curls Margit had copied in sugar onto every Sunday tin since she was nine.

Tobi came in at ten to five, smelling of rain and the night bus. He saw her face and took the second bag without a word. They worked in silence while the window greyed. Margit pressed fine dots into the fondant one after another, shading the body of a small golden biscuit the way her mother had taught her to stipple shadow onto a cake, slow and even, until the thing looked like it might lift off the tray.

When the first light found the flour on the sill, she eased the biscuit from the rack. One wing had cracked at the tip. "I'll buy that one," Tobi said. "Not today," she said, and wrapped it in greaseproof anyway, setting it by the till where it would be the first thing anyone saw when the shutters went up.