Realism forearm tattoo of a green eye with a grey pocket watch and Roman numerals, with the letters MMX below, in black and grey with green colour.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Green eye and pocket watch on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large realistic eye with a green iris and detailed lashes sits above a shaded pocket watch with an open movement and Roman numeral dial. Roman numerals and the letters MMX are placed around the watch and below it. Black and grey shading creates depth across the skin, with the green iris as the only strong colour.

Realism Forearm Eye Pocket watch Clock face Roman numeral Iris

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch came across the counter on a Tuesday, wrapped in a handkerchief that smelled of coal smoke. Mr Aske set it down between them as if it might bite. "Loses four minutes a day," he said. "Only when somebody's watching it."

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Nell Varley pulled the loupe to her eye and eased the case open with the thin blade. The movement unfolded like a town seen from a hill: wheels stacked on wheels, the balance rocking back and forth, the small brass escapement catching the lamplight each time it turned. Inside the back plate someone had scratched MMX with the point of a compass, neat and shallow, the way a man marks a crate he means to keep.

The fault took her ten minutes to find. The hairspring had been knocked out of true, and a tiny collar on the winding stem had worn thin, polished by years of thumb and forefinger. "Who winds it?" she asked. Aske looked at the window instead of at her. "My sister did, every morning before the bakery opened. She passed in March. I haven't been able to make myself wind it since."

She cleaned it, set the beat true and laid it on the velvet with the crown turned towards the door. Aske did not pick it up. He stood a long while, and when he finally did, he turned it over and held it to the light as though a face might be hidden in the brass. Then he wound it once, slowly, and the second hand began its patient walk. On the wall behind them the shop clock kept its own time, four minutes behind, and nobody moved to correct it.