Black and grey fine line lotus flower inside overlapping geometric circles, with arrows and dots, tattooed centrally on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus and geometric circles on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A lotus flower in shaded black and grey sits at the centre of the design, framed by overlapping circles, fine arrowed lines, dotted arcs and a small diamond at the base. The linework is crisp and delicate, and the petals use soft stippled shading for depth. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against plain skin, with the person's back shown from behind.

Fine line Botanical Geometric Back Lotus Flower Circle Arrow Dot Diamond Geometric line Back tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had sealed the Hollin Pass for four days, and Mrs Ardley had run out of candles before she ran out of patience. I was the only guest who had brought drawing instruments, a brass compass and a case of dividers, so when the landlord's daughter asked me to settle an argument about the old lantern in the taproom, I was the one she came to. The dispute was about the painted shade, a ring inside a ring inside a ring, with a flower at the centre that nobody could agree was a lily.

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I spent the evening with a slate and a stub of chalk. Each circle shared a centre with the next, but the radii drifted, and the drift followed a rule I could not see at first. Then I noticed the dots: three in a row along one arc, then a single dot where the arc met a straight line. Arrows marked the ends of the lines, every one pointing downward. Mrs Ardley's husband had been a cartographer before the mill closed, and he had pencilled the rule inside the lid, so faint that the soot had nearly taken it.

The rule was a survey of the valley, scaled down. Each circle was a tarn or a sink, each arrow a runnel carrying meltwater to the lowest ground, and the flower sat where the water would pool before the thaw. I stood on a stool and held the lantern to the window. Outside, the moon lit the drifts blue, and I could just make out the dark seam of the beck where it broke through the snow, exactly where the pencil said it would.

At first light I showed the daughter. She held the lid for a long while, then said her father had always claimed the thaw came through the orchard. We went out with a spade. The ground was soft under the first foot of snow, and the water was already moving, just where the arrows had been pointing all along.