Black dotwork mandala tattoo with a lotus centre on the inner forearm, with soft purple and pink watercolour splashes behind it.

Mandala and lotus on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black dotwork mandala with a lotus flower at its centre sits on the inner forearm, topped by an arched shape and ending in a pointed drop with small dangles. The fine dots and bold linework create shading and texture, with the lotus petals left mostly open. Soft purple, pink and blue watercolour splashes sit behind the lower half, and the design is centred on a plain light wall with a wooden floor below.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Mandala Lotus Flower Teardrop Dot Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The pond behind the mill has gone wild this summer, and I have been out there every morning with my bucket and my sleeves rolled, trying to save the lilies before the frost takes them. Mother says I am daft to go past the alder line, where the track dips into the beeches and nobody goes since the Harrow boys drowned. But the lotus is still flowering out there, pale as a candle in the shade, and somebody has to count the petals before the herons get them.

Last Tuesday I found a tin wedged under a flat stone at the water's edge. The lid was stamped with a rosette like the ones on the old cathedral glass, all tiny dots and hooked lines. Inside were twelve cakes of dye, each pressed into the shape of a drop, the blue gone to dust and the pink still soft as wax. I wet one on my thumb and it bled straight into the water, violet, then rose, then nothing. Nobody in the village has made dye in forty years. The dyer's cottage burnt down the winter after old Abel died.

I took the tin home and left the lid off on the sill so the light could get to it. This morning the cakes were gone, every one, and in their place sat a small brass compass with a teardrop needle, pointing into the beeches. I have walked there twice since and not gone further than the alder. I am writing so that if I do not come back, you will know the pond is not to blame.

Yours, Hester.