Dotwork mandala tattoo on the upper back with blue teardrop panels holding white lightning bolt, triangle, skull and animal motifs around a lotus centre.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala with blue symbol panels on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Colour · Photo

A circular mandala design radiates from a central lotus-like flower, with outer petals of black linework and shaded leaves. Eight teardrop panels filled with blue ink hold white silhouettes of a lightning bolt, a triangle and circle symbol, a skull and animal shapes. Fine stippled dotwork shading softens the petals and panels against the pale skin.

Dotwork Geometric Back Mandala Lotus Lightning bolt Triangle Skull Petal Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The tin came to the lost property office at Harrowden Junction on the Sunday the 4.10 was cancelled for signal failure, and I have kept it on the shelf above my kettle ever since, waiting for someone to ask after it. Inside are eight blue glass drops, each no bigger than a plum stone, and each with a white shape pressed into it. A lightning bolt. A triangle with a circle inside it. A skull. A fox running low, a bird with its wings half open, and a crouching hare. Your father always said the set was a jigsaw of a year, and I never knew what he meant until I held them up to the window.

I asked around the platforms for a month. Nobody claimed them, so I did what the rules allow and wrote the description in the book. Then, last Thursday, a boy of about nine came in with a torn ticket and a question about trains to Carlisle, and while his mother signed the form he counted the drops on the counter with one finger, slowly, the way you used to count stairs. He stopped at the skull and said, very quietly, that it was the one he had wanted.

So I am sending them to you rather than keeping them for a stranger. Tell the boy the hare is the one that rattles. Tell him the lightning bolt sticks a little when you turn it. And tell him, if he ever comes back through Harrowden, that the kettle here is always on.

Yours, Margaret