Black and grey lotus flower tattoo with dotwork shading and mandala-like detail on a person's ribs, with three dots above it.

Lotus flower tattoo on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey lotus flower sits centrally on the lower torso, with a small cluster of three dots above it. The petals use dark shading that fades to light at the edges, and finer dotted and linear patterns fill the inner petals and centre. The photo is a close, slightly angled shot of bare skin with a navel piercing, and the subject's face is not shown.

Botanical Geometric Ribs Lotus Flower Dot Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, and mind the guy ropes. The fair came to Harrowgate Common the spring the river froze, and there was a girl called Ada Penhallow who ran the coconut shy because her father's knees had gone. Nobody thought much of her. She counted change in her head faster than the men could count it on their fingers.

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One night a stranger in a grey coat paid her a penny to knock down the painted lotus pinned above the booth. She missed. He laughed and said the flower was not for knocking down, it was for finding the middle of. Then he drew three dots in chalk on the boards, one above the other, the way you'd mark the stepping stones across a ford. Step on those, he said, and you'll never need a ferry.

Ada did not believe him. But that winter the river took the ferry anyway, and she went out at dusk with a lantern and a pocketful of chalk. Three dots, three stones, and in the middle of the black water a lotus opened on the surface, pale petals with darker edges that faded to light the way the dusk does. Each petal was filled with tiny dots and fine lines, like frost on the reeds, and at its heart sat a small round seal with a single eye.

She stepped out. The water held. When she reached the far bank she turned, and the lotus had closed, and the chalk dots were gone from the stones. The stranger's coat was hanging on the coconut shy, still damp. Ada kept the penny, and every spring after she painted a fresh lotus on the booth canvas, and she never once missed.