Black and grey realism tattoo of a dripping candle with radiating light rays on a man's neck, with a heart and portrait tattoos nearby.

Dripping candle with light rays on the neck

Realism · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a man's neck and upper chest. The central tattoo is a dripping candle with a flame, set against radiating rays of light, shaded in soft greys and deep blacks. Further tattoos include a heart on the left side of the neck, a feather or wing on the right, script lettering on the right chest, and two portrait faces across the chest.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wax had gone hard in the pan again, so Ada Pell tipped it back into the copper and waited for it to sweat. Her father had always said a candle told the truth about the room it was lit in. Draughts showed. Damp showed. A lie showed fastest of all, because the flame leaned away from it and would not settle.

Keep reading

The Hollis boy came up the causeway at dusk with his mother's ring knotted in a handkerchief, asking for a light that would last until morning. Ada had dipped candles for every wake in Sedge Fen for eleven years, and she knew what he wanted before he said it. He wanted the water kept out of the cellar where his brother had gone under. She took the ring, softened the tallow with a pinch of salt, and dipped the wick nine times.

At midnight she carried the lit candle out past the reeds. Its small flame threw rays across the black water, and the air stood so still the flame never once bent. Hollis took it from her with both hands, the way you would take a hot pan, and his face loosened into something close to sleep.

She never melted another ring. Still, every candle she dipped afterwards ran the same way down its length, slow and certain, a bead of white forming at the foot before the wax went hard, as though it knew the road home.

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