Traditional style flash drawing of an hourglass with a red heart in its sand, a red rose and green leaves, framed by gold scrollwork.

Hourglass, heart and rose design

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A painted tattoo design showing an hourglass with a red heart shape in the upper bulb and a red rose at its base, with green leaves on either side. A gold ornamental frame with scrolls and red accents surrounds the hourglass. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with watercolour-style shading in red, blue, gold and green on a pale yellow background.

Traditional Hourglass Heart Rose Leaves Scroll Frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas had carried the hourglass over the pass in a bundle of wet sacking, because the mule had already gone lame at the last switchback and the glass was the only thing in the load that Mrs Okonedo had asked for by name. The frame was brass gone green at the joins, the scrolls worn smooth where a hundred hands had lifted it. Inside, the sand had settled into a heart, which the glassblower in Ardeg said was an accident of the grain, and which Tomas had decided was none of his business.

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The snow started above the cairn at noon. He lost the path twice and found it again by the red rags tied to the stunted larches, counting them as he went the way his grandmother counted beads. By the time he reached the bothy the light was going blue and he had not eaten since morning. A shepherd's wife gave him bread and a cup of something bitter, looked at the sacking, and asked what he was hauling for the widow. He said only that the sand had to run true, or the thing was worth nothing to anyone.

Mrs Okonedo was not a widow. She had buried a husband, a brother and a ringing mill, and she kept the hourglass on the windowsill of the chandlery where the rose cuttings she grew in tins could catch the light. When Tomas unwrapped it she turned it once, slowly, and watched the heart slump into the lower bulb.

"Six hours a turn," she said. "Every time it comes out the same shape. Do you know why?"

He said he did not.

"Neither do I. I only know it does." She set it back on the sill beside the roses, and for the first time since the bothy he felt the cold leave his hands.