Flash drawing of a grey skull wearing a green paisley bandana, framed by green swirling vines on a white background.

Green bandana skull with swirling vines

Mixed · Flash

A grey skull wears a green paisley bandana with white outlines and green flower motifs, and its cheekbones and forehead carry small green dot and flower decorations. Green curling vines with thorn-like tips wrap around the skull on all sides. Shading is smooth and grey on the bone and dark in the eye sockets, set against a plain white background.

Skull Bandana Paisley Vine Swirl Flower Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ivy came back faster than anyone could cut it. Every Tuesday Dilys Roper climbed the rubble stair of Carreg Dinas with her shears in a canvas bag, and every Tuesday the green had crept another yard along the curtain wall overnight, feeling its way into the mortar as if it had somewhere to be. The council man from Machynlleth had stopped coming up. He said the castle was being eaten and that was the end of the matter.

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Dilys disagreed. Her husband Emrys had laid stone on these walls for thirty years, and he had always tied a green paisley bandana over his hair before he started, knotting it at the nape the way his father had. The bandana had faded to the colour of pond water. She had found it folded in the shed after the funeral, still smelling of lime and tobacco, and she had not been able to throw it away or wear it.

On the north tower, under a drift of nettles, she found a carved stone head no bigger than a loaf. It had hollow eye sockets and a ring of small flowers cut into its brow, and someone long ago had picked out the flowers in green paint, most of which had worn away. Vines had threaded through the eye holes and wrapped the jaw. She cleared them with her fingers, one tendril at a time, and the thorns pricked her knuckles without drawing much blood.

She folded the bandana into a band, tied it over the stone's crown, and knotted it at the back where a neck would have been. Then she sat on the wall with her flask and waited for the wind. By Thursday the ivy had climbed back up and wound around the carved head as neatly as a hand around a hat brim, and for once Dilys left it alone.