Black line drawing of a stylised iris with leaves and buds, shown as a botanical tattoo design over a misty grey sea with a small boat.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Iris line design over foggy sea

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black outline drawing of a stylised iris flower sits at the centre of the frame, with three upright petals, rounded side petals, a small central bud and sprigs of leaves and buds around its edges. The thin, even linework is unshaded and has no fill. The design is set against a pale, foggy grey sky fading to a dark green sea, with a single small boat near the horizon at the bottom of the image.

Botanical Iris Flower Leaves Bud Line drawing Sea Boat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every spring the old gardener at Cold Harbour cut one iris from the bed beside the wall and carried it down to the shingle, where the fog came in off the water like wet wool. He never said who it was for. The village children asked, and he told them the flower was for whoever was still out on the sea, and that was all the answer they got.

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His daughter Maud thought it was foolishness. The irises were pale and stiff and smelled of nothing much, and the boats came home without them anyway, or did not come home at all. One April she followed him down with her arms folded and watched him lay the flower on a flat stone with its three upright petals turned toward the sound. The fog took the stone within a minute. Then she saw a lantern far out on the water bob once, and hold steady.

Her father died the winter after. Maud kept the bed, dug the bulbs each autumn, and in spring she carried one down herself. She never once saw a boat come in because of it, and she told nobody that she had stopped expecting to. The village still says the iris by the wall grows thicker than any other, and that its buds open only in fog.

Last March a stranger asked her why she bothered. Maud looked at the grey water, where a single small boat was rowing slowly towards the shingle, and handed him the knife. 'Cut one,' she said. 'Then you'll know.'