Line drawing of a lotus flower with black outlines and tan shading, above swirl motifs and a dotted line with a circle and a star, shown as a tattoo design on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus flower with dotted line ornament

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

A lotus flower with pointed black-outlined petals, shaded in tan and peach tones, sits at the top of the design. Below it are decorative scrollwork, a dotted vertical line, a small circle-and-cross motif and a star motif. The design is centred on a plain white background.

Botanical Geometric Lotus Flower Swirl Dot Dotted line Circle Cross Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lotus came up through the black silt of Sallow Mere every spring, though nobody had ever planted it, and Old Mags Tully said it had been there since the bell went down. She poled her punt out at first light with a coil of tarred cord and a basket of flat grey stones, because the path her father laid was always sinking, and a path that sinks is no use to a drowned village.

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She counted the stones as she set them, the way he had taught her. One for every dot on the line that ran from the flower's heart down into the water, then the curl of iron scroll that her grandmother swore was a sluice gate, then the small round ring with its cross, which marked the place where the chapel door had stood. Last came the star-shaped post, its six arms worn smooth, where a lamp was hung on the nights the fog came off the reeds and people needed to find their way home.

One morning in October a boy in a borrowed coat stood on the bank and asked her what the bell was called. He wanted a name for the sign he meant to nail to the new inn. Mags kept her hands on the pole and told him the path was there for anyone who could count, and that the name was in the water, and he could go and fetch it if he had the nerve.

He didn't. He stayed until dusk watching her hang the lamp on the star. The lotus folded its peach-tinted petals one at a time, slow as a hand closing, and the stones glowed faintly under the surface all the way to the chapel ring.