Colour tattoo on a woman's shoulder and upper arm showing a pink hibiscus, a Roman numeral clock face with a gear, yellow plumeria and butterflies, in a realistic painted style.

Hibiscus and clock face on a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A large colour tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm of a woman photographed from behind. A pink hibiscus with soft shading sits over a Roman numeral clock face with black hands and a cog, with yellow plumeria and small butterflies in the background. The upper arm has a swirling band holding a sunset landscape, and blended teal, orange and yellow tones give the piece a painterly finish.

Realism Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Back Hibiscus Flower Clock Roman numeral Gear Plumeria Butterfly Sunset Landscape Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Tobias Wren kept the clock on the square at Ashby Coombe the way his father had, winding it every Sunday with a key worn as bright as a spoon. In the dry summer of 1956 it began to lose time, ten minutes a day, then twenty. The bakers grumbled that their loaves were never ready when the church bell rang, and the carter kept missing the ferry.

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His granddaughter Nell came home from the coast that August with a crate of plants from a ship's cook who owed her father money. Among the seed packets were a pink trumpet flower streaked orange in the throat and a yellow one that smelled of coconut and salt. While her grandfather slept, Nell pressed a bloom against the glass of the case, and by morning the petals had left a faint stain on the hour hand.

Tobias said nothing. That afternoon he opened the case and found a cog furred with pollen and a small blue butterfly caught in the escapement, its wings folded as neatly as a letter. He freed it with a hairpin. Then he and Nell sat on the step with the case between them, and the sun went down behind the church the colour of the cook's sherbet, the gold of it running into the teal of the evening.

The clock has kept true time ever since. The hands still point where Nell left them, leaning towards the flower as if they had caught its smell. On Sundays, when the square is empty, the bakers set their watches by it, and nobody in Ashby Coombe has ever asked why the hour hand is a little bent.