Black and grey blackwork tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder showing a hare wrapped in a snake, with roses and leaves above and an eye in a triangle below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hare, snake and botanical upper arm piece

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A hare is wrapped by a scaled snake within a geometric frame of fine lines and dots, with an eye inside a triangle at the lower edge. Above, rose blooms, leaves and berry sprigs trail across the shoulder in detailed black linework and shading. The piece is entirely in black ink and grey tones, photographed against a plain pale background with the arm angled toward the camera.

Blackwork Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Shoulder Hare Rabbit Snake Rose Flower Leaves Berry Eye Triangle Geometric line Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud,

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The rain has got into the still-room again, so I am writing this at the broken window of the chapter house, where the light holds longest. Mother Agnes says the hare has come back to the rose wall and she will not let me set the snare. The adder has lived under the lintel of the old gate since Lent, and between the two of them they have kept the garden clear of greenfly better than any gardener we ever paid.

Yesterday I followed the hare to the dry well. The adder was coiled round its hindquarters, not squeezing, only resting, the way a cat sits on a warm stone. I counted the dots the frost had left on the flagging, nine of them, set in a square inside a six-cornered line the masons cut long before anyone here took a vow. Agnes says the eye carved at the foot of the arch is the same eye that watches the bees, and that whoever fixed the hare to the snake knew which of the two would outlive the other.

I have not told her I went down the well with a lantern. There was water at the bottom, black and still, and on its skin a single rose petal turning slowly. I am sending you the pressed one from my apron pocket. Keep it dry. Come before the thaw and bring your good boots, because the path past the mill is under a foot of water and I will not carry you across it. Your loving sister, Edith.