Botanical fine line tattoo of lilies and curling vines in red ink across the top of a bare foot, resting on a blue towel.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lily and vine tattoo across the top of a foot

Botanical · Other · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows three lily-like flowers with a cluster of leaves and a long curling vine that sweeps up towards the ankle. The linework is fine and even, with the petals softly shaded in a lighter tone to give some depth. The ink is a single warm red-pink hue against the skin, and the design fills the top of the foot diagonally.

Botanical Fine line Other Lily Flower Vine Leaves Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Win, the lilies came out on Tuesday, the same morning Dad finished fixing the tiller pin, so you know what that means: he will be insufferable about it until Michaelmas. There are three of them now, all open at once on the bank by the lock where the willow hangs over. Pink at the throat and paler at the tips, as if someone pressed a thumb into each one and thought better of it.

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You remember the cutting he took from Mrs Pellow's garden in Braunston, wrapped in a wet tea towel and stuffed down beside the coal? He swore it would die before Stoke Hammond. It didn't. It went up the mooring rope the way you used to climb the pear tree, one curl at a time, and now it has reached the stern rail and is feeling about for the chimney.

Last night I sat on the front step with a cup of tea gone cold and watched the vine cross the cabin roof. Dad came out, looked at it for a long while, and said a lily was a thing you ought to leave alone once it had settled, that you should never cut what has found its footing. I thought he meant the plant. Then he went in, and I heard him singing the old one about the lock-keeper's daughter, badly, which he only does when he's pleased.

I have not told him I'm taking the tiller on the Oxford run next month. I will tell him when the flowers have gone over, when there's nothing left to be pleased about except the work. Write back. Tell me whether Tom still keeps bees, and whether you'll come up for the lock fair. Bring your good shoes, the towpath is murder.

Ada