Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Legs rising from a tree stump

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A black outlined pair of legs emerges from a tree stump, with leafy branches and dark solid leaf shapes curling around its base. The thin contour lines contrast with the filled black leaves, which give the design weight. The tattoo is shown in black ink only against pale skin, with a plain grey background and no other elements.

Blackwork Botanical Calf Leg Leaves Branches Plant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You were nine the summer they felled the ash above Skerrick Haven, and nobody thought to ask the stump how it felt about being left standing. Your grandmother Edna said it would sulk. She poured a saucer of milk at its base every evening for the tree's ghost, and the gulls drank it before the cat could.

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In March the rain came sideways off the bay and the stump began to sprout. Pale thin branches wound round its base like rope round a capstan, and dark leaves unfurled along them, glossy as wet slate. Tomas from number four said the tree was walking off and he dared you to prove it. So you climbed up and stood on the top with your bare feet in the bark, and it was warm, the way a sleeping dog is warm.

Your legs went quiet first. The bark closed round your ankles slow and kind, like a sock being drawn up, and when you looked down there was nothing below your knees but a grey tangle of roots and leaves. Tomas ran for Edna. She came down the lane with her apron still tied on, took one look, and sat down hard on the harbour wall, laughing until she cried.

The tree kept you all summer. Edna talked to your shins over the washing line and told you about the boats. In September, when the herring fleet came in and the lamps went on along the quay, the gulls landed on the stump and walked round it in a slow ring, counting something only they could see. Then the milk saucer was empty, the leaves at your ankles were shining, and you were still very much home.