A flash sheet of nine black line drawings of cacti and succulents in pots, arranged in a three by three grid on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nine potted cacti and succulents sheet

Black and grey · Flash

The sheet shows nine small potted plants, including round and paddle cacti, tall columnar cacti and a spiky agave-like succulent. The linework is loose and sketchy in black ink, with some pots marked with small cross shapes. The drawings are arranged in an even grid on plain white with no shading or colour.

Cactus Succulent Pot Sketch Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hang your wet coats nearer the fire, the lot of you, and mind the snow melting off the stair, because I'll not tell this twice before the bread comes out. Nine pots went up the mountain road that winter on the back of a mule called Pilar, and every one of them had a little cross pressed into its side with a thumbnail, so the carrier could tell her own from the ones she'd bartered for.

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The carrier was Ines Varga, a potter's daughter from the dry side of the valley, and the pots held cacti her mother had grown in a yard that never saw rain. There were round ones with ears like a hare, a squat fellow with paddles stacked like hands at prayer, tall ones that leaned like candles knocked crooked, and a spiky thing that looked like a crown somebody had sat on. She meant to sell them at the market in Hollin Cross. Then the sky came down on the pass and she had to stop here, with the mule stabled and the pots lined up along the bar like guests nobody had invited.

The innkeeper, a man who measured everything in loaves, asked her what sort of fool carries spiky things through snow. Ines said they asked for nothing but a sill and a little forgetting, and that a cactus would sooner sulk for a season than die of kindness. So she set them on the window ledge facing the white field, and the frost came in each night and the pots sweated and the spines stayed sharp.

When the pass opened in April, the carrier loaded up and left, and the nine pots went with her, all but one. That one she traded for a night's lodging and a second helping of stew, and it is still on that ledge, its crooked stalk leaning toward the mountains, with a pink flower open on top. Ask the innkeeper's grandson and he'll tell you it has never once been watered by anyone who meant to.