Colour tattoo of scattered falling leaves in orange, coral and purple across the upper chest, below the collarbone.

Falling leaves across the upper chest

Chest · Colour · Photo

A scatter of stylised leaves drifts in a loose diagonal line across the upper chest, close to the collarbone. Most leaves are filled with orange, coral and pink, with a few outlined in dark purple and one larger grey leaf in the centre. The linework is smooth and fairly bold, with soft shading inside each leaf and plenty of bare skin between them.

Chest Leaves Autumn leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Pell counted the windfalls in the bottom orchard at Hollins Cross every evening that late August, because her grandmother had told her the wind kept a tally too. The apples hung heavy on the boughs but the leaves were already going, and each dusk the wind came up the valley from the Severn to collect what it was owed for turning the press. It asked politely, in the manner of old neighbours, and it was never refused.

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Her grandmother had paid it in leaves, a handful at a time: orange ones from the quince, coral from the Blenheim, a few pink ones from the pear by the gate. That was the bargain. The wind carried them over the wall and the cider ran clear and sweet all winter. This year the wind was greedy. It took the purple leaves from the damson hedge, then the orange ones, then the pink, and still it came back up the valley asking, its voice low in the walnut tops.

On the last evening of the month Ada had nothing left in her apron but a single grey leaf from the old mulberry, which her grandmother had planted the year she married and which had never turned colour like the rest. She held it out at the gate. The wind went quiet. Then it lifted the leaf from her palm, turned it twice in the air, and set it down on the bench beside her, face up, like a coin it had decided to leave.

Next morning the wind had gone on over the Malverns, the cider was working in the barrels, and the bottom orchard was thinning to bare branches. Ada kept the grey leaf in her apron pocket all winter. When she took it out in spring it was still grey, still soft, and still, she was almost sure, a little warm.