Tribal-style tattoo design of a gothic cross with a cyan-highlighted centre and dark tribal flame motifs on each side, shown on a white background.

Gothic cross with tribal flames design

Colour · Flash

A drawing of a gothic cross with pointed, flared arms, filled in dark teal with a glowing cyan inner band that follows the outline. Sharp tribal flame shapes sit behind the upper arms and rise from the lower arms, with two larger tribal flourishes curling out at the base. The design is centred on a plain white background with bold, solid shapes and no shading.

Cross Tribal Flame

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the kettle's only just boiled and I'll not talk to the back of your head. You know the iron cross on the gantry at Ashby Fold, the one with the blue glass? Painted that colour by a man who had nothing left in his tin but teal and nerve.

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The winter the fog came down so thick the guard of the eleven-fifteen couldn't see his own hand on the brake, Edwin Crane was the signalman up there. The glass had cracked in the frost and the light had gone dull as dishwater. So he climbed the gantry with a can of paraffin and a box of Swan Vestas in his coat pocket, and he set the arms of that cross alight. The flames came up off the iron in black, sharp tongues, all points and curls, like the metal had grown fire of its own.

The train heard it before it saw it. The driver told later that the blue band ran through the murk like a path laid down for him, and he followed it in at a crawl until the engine nosed to a stop a yard short of the buffers. Edwin came down the ladder with his cuffs scorched and his eyebrows gone, and the guard walked up the platform just to shake his hand and say nothing at all.

They never fixed the glass properly after that. The porters swear the cross still burns blue when the fog comes in, and that nobody has ever once had to light it. So mind the step on your way out, and if you hear a kettle singing up in the signal box, don't go looking for who put it on.