Two forearm tattoos side by side: a shaded realism gas mask with orange eyes and a daisy on the left, and a black line banner with a star on the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gas mask and daisy forearm, with banner tattoo

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The left image shows a realistic black and grey gas mask with glowing orange-red lenses, a white daisy with an orange centre, and a shaded hand below it. The right image shows a black line tattoo of a ribbon banner across a star, with a swirling curl beneath, on a pale forearm. The left piece uses detailed shading and colour accents, while the right uses thin, simple linework with little or no shading.

Realism Traditional Forearm Daisy Flower Hand Banner Star Swirl Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have the respirator out of its bag before the lorry reaches the barrier, because Sergeant Vass has told you twice that sealed trailers from the east are not to be opened without a mask on. The lenses are scratched to milk. The orange glow you think you see in them is only the sodium lamps on the gantry, swinging back at you every time you turn your head.

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The driver, Tomas Renner, hands down his papers without looking at you. He keeps his thumb on the wheel and says the trailer holds nothing but seed, the old open-pollinated kind that doesn't need a licence. Then, almost as an afterthought, he passes you a paper cone wrapped in wet newspaper. Inside is a daisy with its roots still clinging to a clod of soil. His mother grew it on a balcony in Dorvan, he says, and she told him to give it to whoever was on the night desk, because that person would be the one who decided whether he got home.

You open the trailer with the mask on. The air inside is sweet and dusty, and the crates are stencilled with a woman's handwriting, a name you can't pronounce and a list of places that aren't on any map you have. You count the packets twice, the way the manual says, and the number is right. When you climb down, you slide the stamped clearance form across the counter. He signs it and leaves the pen on the desk, and you understand that this is the whole of the bargain.

Later, when the lorry has gone and the barrier has dropped back into its cradle, you set the daisy in a jam jar of tap water beside the ledger. Under the lamp, its white petals look almost grey, and its orange centre is the only colour on the desk. In the ledger you write: one flower, received. Then, in the column for what was given, you write one night's clearance, and you leave the pen where he left it.