Black and grey lotus mandala tattoo with dangling dotted drops across the centre of a person's upper back.

Lotus mandala with drops on the back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical lotus mandala sits at the centre of the back, with layered petals filled with fine ornamental detailing. Below it, scalloped arcs and a row of dotted chains ending in teardrop shapes hang downward, all in black linework with grey shading. The design is in black and grey only and is framed by a floral and lace bra strap at the top of the image.

Botanical Dotwork Back Lotus Mandala Flower Drop Dotted chain Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire is eating the good wood, and I will not tell this twice to people who stare at the door. Long ago, in the dry kingdom of Oshra Vale, the rains forgot the road to the palace. The rivers were cracks in the clay, and the king's granddaughter's wedding canopy hung unfinished in the cold hall because the embroiderer, old Ansa Dhol, had gone blind in one eye and could no longer find the needle's eye with her good one.

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The court asked her for a lotus, the flower that opens out of mud and never complains about it. So Ansa worked through the winter, petal upon petal, each one a little mandala of rings and scallops like the lips of a well. Below the flower she stitched chains of silver dots, and at the end of every chain a drop, because the court wanted rain sewn onto the cloth before it would fall from the sky. By midsummer she had hung eleven drops, and the bride's mother had started to weep into her sleeve.

When the last drop was finished, the king came to inspect it with his clerks. He counted the drops, nodded, then frowned at the centre. Ansa had left the heart of the lotus bare. "Why?" he asked. "A flower that is finished cannot drink," she said, and she would not unpick a single stitch, even when the clerks threatened her with the well.

That night the clouds came over the hill the way cattle come to a gate, slowly and then all at once. The rain fell straight through the open heart of the canopy and onto the bride's hands, and nobody in the hall dared to move. The cloth still hangs in Oshra. If you go there, look up at the stone ceiling of the hall, where the lotus is carved with its centre left hollow, and count the drops. There are always more than you expect.