Pink and grey pencil drawing of a pocket watch framed by two lotus flowers, beaded chains and scrolling foliage, shown as a tattoo design.

Lotus flowers and pocket watch design

Botanical · Colour · Flash

A pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a pocket watch at the centre, with two open lotus flowers behind it and strings of beads looping around them. Scrolling acanthus-style leaves and swirls fill the lower half, with fine outlines and soft pink shading on a pale background. The composition is dense and symmetrical, with the watch as the focal point.

Botanical Neo-trad Lotus Pocket watch Bead Flower Scroll Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch had stopped the year the river turned to glass, so the village of Hesk set its days by the lotus instead. Every dawn the water terraces opened their white cups, and old Oonagh Teague strung one bead for each bloom on a cord that ran from her door to the well. By the time the cord reached the well it was heavy with a thousand beads, and the children were told that was how long the sky had been waiting.

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Her grandson Tavi did not believe the sky was waiting. He was twelve and had hands that could not keep still, and one winter he took the watch down from its nail above the hearth and carried it into the reed house to pry the back open. Inside, under a crust of grey dust, were the hands, and a fine engraved ring of leaves that curled round the dial like smoke. The hour hand had come to rest against the largest lotus. The minute hand was not still at all. It crept backwards, one notch for each morning, as though something on the far side of the glass were pulling it.

Oonagh took the watch from him without anger. She held it to the light and counted the beads on her cord with her thumb, the way other women count prayers. Then she hung it back on its nail and cut the cord at the thousandth bead.

They say Hesk still tells its days from the lotus, though the cord was never strung again. Tavi winds the watch on the first morning of each season. It does not tick, but on quiet mornings you can see the minute hand move back by a single leaf, and the village rises and opens its doors to a little more of the day that was lost.