Colour realism tattoo of purple orchids and a blue hummingbird with teal swirls on the side of a torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hummingbird and orchids with swirls on the side

Realism · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A hummingbird in mid-flight feeds from a cluster of purple orchids, with pale blue and lilac swirls trailing behind the motifs. The orchids and bird are rendered with smooth, soft shading and fine detail, while the swirls are lighter and more washed out. The colour palette is dominated by magenta, violet, and turquoise against the skin, and the design wraps diagonally across the side of the torso.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The frost has got into the lean-to again, so I have given up on the potatoes and gone back to the orchids. You will laugh. Father's glasshouse on the top field is the only warm room left on Hollin Farm, and the phalaenopsis your mother bought from the market in Kendal are sulking in it like three old aunts at a funeral. Six flowers between them, and not one has opened since October.

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Then yesterday a hummingbird came in. I don't know how. The door was latched, but there it was at half past two, hanging in the cold light between the pots as if it had been sent for. It went straight to the purple cluster nearest the vent and drank, its wings going so fast they were only a smudge of blue. Tom Pardoe from the next farm says they don't come this far north. Tom also says the Pennines are full of ghosts, so I have decided to take his word for nothing.

I stood there holding the bucket of sugar water I had been meaning to put out for the robins, and I didn't move for a long time. When I looked again the bird had gone. The orchid it had fed from had a bead of nectar on its lip, and two buds that had been shut since summer had split open overnight, pale pink at the edges, like someone had breathed on them.

I'm not telling you this so you'll come home for Christmas, though you should. I'm telling you because something came in out of the cold to drink from what we'd given up on. Keep the sugar water on the sill, Nell. Write back soon. Your loving sister, Ada

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