Botanical back tattoo of two purple and pink lotus flowers linked by black swirling linework running down the spine.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus flowers and swirls down the spine

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a tattoo running vertically down her spine. Two lotus flowers in purple and pink sit at the top and bottom of the design, with loose petals and black swirling tribal-style linework connecting them. The bold black lines contrast with the soft, shaded colour of the petals against warm skin.

Botanical Back Lotus Flower Petal Swirl Spine Woman

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell was sent down to the mill pond in the last week of August with a basket for the windfalls and a warning from her mother not to touch the lotus. Nobody in Coldharbour Orchard could say who had planted it. It had come up in the cider pond the spring the old lord died, and by late summer it opened two blooms, one purple as a bruise and one pink at the rim, and the petals lay on the water like coins nobody wanted.

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She found the black line first, a thread of wet mud running from the reeds to the sluice gate, curling back on itself the way the mill race curled round the stones. Where it crossed the bank a petal had been pressed flat, then another, then a third, each one tracking down towards the foot of the orchard wall. Her grandmother had told her that the pond was a door, and that petals only fell when something on the other side was counting.

Nell followed the trail through the Bramley rows until the light went orange, past a stone with a swirl cut into its face, and found the second bloom at the bottom of the wall, half sunk, its centre full of rain. She cupped it up. The stem wound round her wrist like a hand and then let go. When she walked home the basket was heavy with apples she had not picked, and her mother, looking at the petals stuck to her sleeves, only said the pond had given back what it owed.