Side view of a black and grey fern tattoo running up the ribs and side of the torso, with black lace lingerie and a raised arm.

Fern tattoo on the side of the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A side profile of a torso shows a large fern frond tattoo running from the lower ribs up towards the underarm, with a curled fiddlehead at the lower end. The linework is fine and the leaflets are shaded with soft grey stippling, giving the fern some depth. The image is black and grey, with the neutral skin tone and a blurred green plant and pink wall in the background.

Botanical Fine line Ribs Fern Frond Leaves Botanical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Morag, the spring tide took the lower step of the boathouse again, and Father has stopped pretending he minds. You asked in your last letter whether the fern is still climbing the tower. It is. The little one at the foot of the wall has put up its first frond since the gales, still curled tight as a watch spring, and I have been crouching beside it every morning with my tea going cold.

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The keeper before Father was a man named Ewan Gray who kept a notebook of everything that grew in the cracks. Most of his entries are dull until the last few pages, where he writes that the fern uncurls one turn of the fiddlehead a day when the light is good and not at all when the fog sits on the Sound for a week. I thought it nonsense until I measured it myself with a length of red thread. He was right. Leaflet by leaflet, it opens like a hand that has decided to trust you.

Last Tuesday the fog lifted for an hour and the sun came in low across the water, and the frond finally stood clear of the stone. I climbed the stair to the lamp room to fetch the glass, and when I came back down the fern had thrown a shadow across the whitewash, lacy and precise, far bigger than a plant of its size has any right to be. Father saw me standing there with the lens in my hand and asked what I was staring at. I said nothing. I said it was only the fern.

Come in June if the crossing allows. Bring the good scissors, as we will want to clear the gutter before the autumn storms, but leave the fiddlehead alone. Ewan wrote that a fern should be let finish its own unfolding, and I am trying to learn that. Your loving sister, Isla.