Black and grey mandala tattoo with layered petals on an upper arm near the elbow, with partial script visible above it.

Mandala tattoo on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala built from layered petals, dotted rings and concentric geometric bands sits on the outer arm near the elbow. The fine stippled shading and bold black outlines give it depth, with grey tones softening the inner petals. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against plain skin, with a grey sleeve at the left edge.

Geometric Botanical Upper arm Mandala Lotus Petal Flower Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lens came up from the mainland in forty crates, and Mairi Dunn was the one who unpacked it, lifting out the brass rings one at a time and counting the glass prisms as if any could have wandered off. Each ring was a band of light waiting to be bent, and the keeper, Auld Tam, said they were too fine for a girl's hands. He was not wrong about the hands, only about the rest.

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On winter evenings, when the lamp was lit and the kitchen wall took the shadow of the glass, Mairi saw petals in it. She drew them on the backs of tide tables with a stub of charcoal: first the dotted ring for the spray, then the bands for the swell, then the petals opening outward like a flower on the water. Tam scolded her for wasting paper. He pinned the drawings up anyway, one above the other, until the whole kitchen was a garden of ink.

The storm came in the third week of November with the Fennick boats still out past the skerries. The lamp's clockwork seized at midnight. Mairi climbed the tower with the drawings tucked inside her oilskin and turned the great lens by hand, counting the rings aloud, dot and band and petal, the way the pattern told her to. Each time the beam swung, she checked the paper and turned it again, until a thin white road ran straight out over the water and the boats found it.

They came in at dawn, four of them, low in the water and shouting. Tam stood on the rocks with his cap in his hands and said very little. That night he took down the old tide tables, pinned the best drawing in the middle of the wall, and handed her a fresh stub of charcoal. She had started the next ring before the kettle boiled.