Black and grey line drawing of a horned animal skull framed by roses and leaves, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Horned skull with roses design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical drawing of an animal skull with curved horns, flanked on each side by open roses, leaves and small sprigs. The bold black outlines define the horns and petals, while the skull is shaded with fine stippled dots. The design is in black and grey on a plain white background, with the composition centred and filling the frame.

Dotwork Botanical Skull Horn Rose Leaves Sprig Petal Animal skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The ox skull is up on the chapel wall now, over the arch where the roof fell in last winter and the ivy came through as if it had been waiting. Mrs Ruddock wanted it burned with the other rubbish from the clearance, but I told her the horns were too good to waste, and she laughed and let me keep them. Two men from the estate office have been up twice asking what the old place is worth. I keep telling them the roses are worth more, which is not an answer they can put in a ledger.

You would not believe the roses this year. The white ones have gone to hips, and the dark crimson ones open so heavily that the petals drop onto the flagstones before anyone thinks to cut them. I gathered a basketful on Tuesday and pressed them inside Father's psalter, the one with the cracked spine that nobody reads now. The rue by the moat has come up early too, so I have tied a bunch to the gate for Mother.

Three evenings I have been at the stippling with a pin and a bottle of ink, working the bone from the cheekbones inward. Mrs Ruddock says it looks like frost on a window. I think it looks like something that has been weathering from the inside for a long time, patient and not at all unhappy about it. The estate men want the roof sheeted and the walls made safe. I have told them the walls are safe enough so long as the roses hold them up.

This morning a single petal had come down onto the bone between the eye sockets, dark as a bruise and perfectly flat. I did not sweep it away. I left it there and came in to write to you, and when I went back out at dusk it was still there, the wind not having dared to shift it. Come at the end of June if you can. I will show you the ivy and the petal, and you can tell me I am being foolish.

Your brother, Edwin