Watercolour-style fine line tattoo of green leaves and red berries with script along a branch, running down a woman's spine on her back.

Leafy branch and script down the spine

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A vertical branch of watercolour-style leaves in green, olive and brown runs down the centre of the back, following the spine. Small red berries and loose red specks sit among the leaves, and a fine black script line forms the stem, with the lettering only partly legible. The image is a close view of the back with a white crocheted top, the tattoo centred on bare skin against a plain light background.

Fine line Botanical Back Leaves Branch Berry Script Quote Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marcus, the bay tree at the end of the lower terrace has finally fruited, and I have stripped the branches as you asked, though not before the blackbirds took their share. Carry what I send to the shop near the Subura and tell the man there that the leaves are the grey-green kind, not the pale ones he tried to sell us at the Kalends. He will argue. Let him.

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Mother came up to the villa yesterday, leaning on the new stick Dorcas carved her. She stood beneath the old olive by the cistern and said the tree had outlived two owners and a fire, and that something so stubborn deserved a second look before anyone set an axe to it. I did not tell her about the letter from the procurator's clerk. I will tell you when you come, and you must come before the sea road closes for winter.

She sent a line for you, scratched on a wax tablet and wrapped in wool so the damp would not take it: tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. She had it from her father, who had it from a poet nobody reads now. When she first said it I thought it a comfort. Now I think she meant it as a warning, and that she alone has noticed the berries are coming in redder this year than they have since the old consul died.

The branch I have pressed between two boards for you is still green at the stem. I have copied the line along its length in ink so you will see it climbs the way the tree grows, straight at first and then bent a little by the wind. Burn this when you have read it, as usual. Your sister, Livia.