Fine line black fern sprig tattoo on the hip of a woman wearing a black and white striped bodysuit, with one hand resting on her stomach.

Fern sprig tattoo on a hip

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop shows a woman in a black and white striped bodysuit with one hand resting on her stomach. A small single-needle style fern sprig in black ink sits on the side of her hip, angled diagonally with a central stem and paired leaflets. The soft film-like colouring and shallow focus keep the emphasis on the tattoo and the striped fabric.

Fine line Botanical Other Fern Sprig Leaf Botanical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lot of you, the lamp's still warm and the Wagstaff boys have gone off to coax the generator back to life again. This is about Nell Ashdown and the sprig of fern she kept in her coat pocket the summer the Pennine Wonder came rattling over the hill.

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Nell was a rope-girl on the Wonder, and she kept the caravan of Joseph Crane, who sold tonics that cured everything from gout to grief. Every morning she pressed a fern frond between the pages of his ledger to keep it flat. He told her ferns had no flowers and so made their children in secret, under stones, in the dark. She said that was the cleverest way of doing anything, and he laughed until he coughed up his breakfast.

The fair moved on in September, and the ledger went missing the same night. Crane swore Nell had taken it, and the Wonder's men looked at their boots. So she walked back up to the valley where she'd first found the frond, climbed past the quarry and the dead sheep, and found a grey rock furred with lichen. Underneath it the ferns were green smoke, all their dust shaken loose. She tipped her pocketful of frond onto the damp earth and pressed it down with her thumb.

Folk say the council men never cut the bracken on that rise, and that one frond always leans towards the fairground field, as if it's still waiting for its wages. Mind your pockets, mind your ledgers. And if a green sprig turns up in your coat come spring, you'll know Nell has been by.