Colour traditional tattoo on a forearm of a glass bottle with a woven stopper, showing a green graveyard scene with crosses and lightning bolts, beside a red flower and green leaves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Graveyard bottle and flower on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A glass bottle with a woven cork-style stopper sits at the centre, with a green-blue graveyard inside showing crosses, a brown coffin shape and yellow lightning bolts. A red flower with teal centres and green leaves sits to the left, and a leaf rises above the bottle. Bold black outlines frame the bright colour, with soft shading on the glass and a dark background behind the arm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The tinker came up the lane again on Tuesday with his cart rattling and the hens scattering before him, and I bought the bottle you warned me against. You were right about the price. It cost me two good eggcups and the shilling I had put by for the chimney sweep. He swore it held a whole churchyard that would keep the storms off the roof. I laughed at him until he tipped it toward the window, and then I stopped, because inside the green glass there really were little crosses standing in a wet field, and a brown coffin lying half open under a sky full of lightning.

The storm came on Thursday, the one that took the Morrow boy's boat. The lightning forked over the bay and every bolt I saw through the window seemed to flash at once inside the bottle too, yellow as egg yolk. I sat up with it on the sill telling myself it was only glass and only paint. By morning the wind had dropped, the gulls were back, and the coffin lid had shifted an inch. I have decided not to mention that to Mother.

Mrs Morrow came to the door on Saturday asking after her son's things. She saw the bottle on my sill and went very still, then asked me, quite politely, whether I meant to keep it. I said I did not know. She said a churchyard is a poor thing to keep in a window, and I have been thinking about that ever since, along with the fact that the tinker has not come back up the lane.

I have set a red flower from the hedge beside the cork, to keep the little graves company. Write soon, and tell me honestly whether you think a bottle can hold a storm.

Your loving sister, Ada

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