Black and grey lotus and frangipani flower tattoo with lace-like filigree and hanging chains on the upper back.

Lotus and lace ornament across upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a lotus with two five-petalled flowers on either side, set above a lace-like ornamental panel. Chains of small beads with teardrop ends hang from the lower part of the design. The shading is soft on the petals and the linework is fine and precise, centred on the upper back against a plain, softly lit background.

Botanical Back Lotus Flower Lace Filigree Chain Bead Ornament Mandala

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Oona, the rain on Tallow Deck has finally stopped, so the hydroponic bays are humming again and I can hear myself think. You will laugh, but I spent the whole shift arguing with a frangipani cutting that refused to root in the grey light. Pell says I should speak to it more gently. I told him the plant has had enough gentle people.

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The lotus pool came through the solar storm better than we feared. Every bloom on the lower ring opened at dawn, pale and certain of itself, the way your grandmother's lace looked when she finished a hem. I took the bead chain from the old sieve drawer and hung it off the rim of the pool to test the drip. The teardrop ends caught the lamplight and swung in a perfect line, one per second, which told me the feed was balanced.

Here is the strange part. The ornament panel we salvaged from the wreck of the Halcyon, the one with the filigree lattice, fits the pump housing exactly, as though someone cut it to the bolt pattern. Pell thinks the original builders meant it as decoration. I think they meant it as a map of the water flow, and the flowers were only labels. I have sketched it twice, and both times the petals came out looking like a diagram of the tank.

Come home at the turn of the cycle. Bring the good pliers and that tin of ink you like. I want you to see the chain run. Tell your mother the cutting is still alive, even if it does not yet know it. Yours, Maren.