Greyscale lotus flower and hexagonal honeycomb tattoo with teal and blue accents on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus and honeycomb on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large lotus flower sits above a field of hexagons that wraps down the arm toward the elbow. The lotus is shaded in soft greys with a small blue star-shaped bloom and teal outlines, while the honeycomb cells are rendered in black and grey with dotted edges and highlights. A decorative mandala-like motif runs along the top of the frame.

Geometric Botanical Upper arm Lotus Flower Honeycomb Hexagon Star Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You reach the Hollin Gap an hour after the last bus has gone back down to Settle, with the wooden crates still strapped to the mule because your uncle will not trust a van on the switchbacks. The hives are white-painted and stacked in threes along the lee of the wall, and the bees have gone quiet for the cold. Nobody told you the hexagons inside would look like a lit map when you finally prise the lid up with the hive tool, rows of wax cells stepping down the frame like stairs to a cellar.

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Your uncle Tomas, who keeps the lotus pond at the bottom of the valley for reasons he never explains, says the bees know the weather before the sky does. He taps the comb with a knuckle and listens. "Too heavy to move," he says, and you cannot tell whether he means the honey, the frame or you. Blue gentian is still open in the grass by the cairn, the only colour left on the pass, and a single star-shaped bloom of it has frozen stiff on the stone.

You cut one comb free and wrap it in muslin, the way he showed you, and carry it down ahead of the snow. At the pond the lotus leaves are folded shut under a skin of ice. Tomas takes the parcel without unwrapping it and holds it to his chest like something that might still be warm. Behind you the first flakes come over the pass and settle into every cell of the hollow.