Black and grey fine line lavender sprig tattoo on the side of the ribs, shown in a full view and a close-up.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lavender sprig on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A slender lavender sprig with a stem, two leaves and a flower spike runs vertically along the side of the ribs. The linework is fine and the flower cluster is shaded with soft grey tones to suggest individual buds. The left image shows the tattoo in context on bare skin above dark jeans, and the right image is a close-up of the flower head and stem.

Fine line Botanical Ribs Lavender Sprig Flower Stem Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been climbing the spiral stair since before the tide turned, carrying the tin of paraffin and your father's flask, and by the time you reach the lamp room the glass is already beaded with fog. Below, the sea hisses against Gullstone Point like a kettle nobody has thought to take off the hob. Your father's hands shake on the winding handle now, so it falls to you to check the mechanism turns true before the light goes out over the water.

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Mother planted the lavender at the foot of the wall the year the tower was limewashed white again. She said the bees would find the light before the fishermen did. Every July you cut the stems with the kitchen scissors, tied them in bundles with garden string, and hung them upside down from nails in the scullery, so that the whole house smelled of it all winter, even the stairs.

The night the fog came in thick as wool, the Mary Hale was somewhere past the Scar with her engine dead. The beam was no use to her in that murk, but the wind carried the sweetness of dried lavender up off the headland, faint and purple, and old Sam Pender swore he smelt it before he saw any glow. He came in on it, slow, steering by nose, and tied up at the slip just as the lamp began to pale.

Afterwards you pressed a sprig between the pages of the logbook, under the entry for that night. Your father reads it sometimes, running his thumb over the brittle flower head, and says nothing at all. Somebody out there is always counting on a smell they cannot see, and you have decided that is reason enough to keep the stems dry.