Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a magnolia branch with pink-red blooms, a closed bud and dark green leaves, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Magnolia branch on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a branch with two open pink-red magnolia blooms, a closed bud near the top and several dark green leaves along the stem. Bold black outlines define the petals and leaves, and the colour is layered with soft shading to give the petals depth. The branch rises diagonally up the arm, with the largest bloom near the shoulder and the lower bloom and leaves framing the lower half of the design.

Neo-trad Botanical Upper arm Magnolia Flower Bloom Bud Leaves Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mule refused the third switchback below Sang La, so I unloaded the cutting myself and lashed it to my pack in wet sacking. Dorje had warned me in Gangtok that a magnolia would not survive the pass in October. He said it the way he said most things, looking past my ear at the weather. I had paid him anyway, and I had a letter in my coat for the abbot at Pemayangtse, and I did not intend to arrive with a stick.

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The track narrowed to a shelf of grey slate, and the wind came up from the valley with sleet in it. Every hour I unwrapped the sacking to check the wood. It was green under the bark, the leaves folded like hands. The bud near the top had swollen to the size of a thumb, a dark red lip just beginning to split.

On the last stretch, where the cairns stood with their prayer flags worn to threads, the sleet stopped. For a minute the sun came through a gap in the cloud and laid itself across the stone. I unwrapped the cutting and saw the bud had opened in the cold, two petals pushed back like a coat unbuttoned, and the pink inside had the colour of the pass at dusk.

I sat on a rock and did not move for a long time. Dorje's mule came round the bend behind me, stamping, and I heard it snort at the flower as if the idea had been its own. I tied the sacking loosely and went on down the far side, leaving the wet wrapping on a cairn for whoever came after.