Black ornamental flower tattoo with lace-like petals, a stem and two patterned leaves on a forearm, in a botanical blackwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental flower and stem on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large ornamental flower sits at the top of a long stem with two leaves, all in black ink. The petals and leaves are filled with lace-like patterns, dots and fine scrollwork, with a dotted detail at the base of the stem. The image is a close, front-on photo of the skin with the tattoo filling most of the frame, and the ink appears dark and crisp against the skin.

Botanical Blackwork Forearm Flower Stem Leaves Mandala Lace Paisley Dot Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Before the bakers in Hollin Cross lit their ovens, old Mrs Tarrant went out with a lamp to see whether the frost had taken the garden. It had taken everything except the one flower by the step, a tall stalk with a head like a starched doily folded into points. She had planted it from a seed in a paper twist given to her by a travelling pedlar forty winters back, and he had told her it would bloom only for someone who could keep a promise before breakfast.

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She knelt in the wet grass and counted the petals with her thumb. Seven points, each one fringed with tiny holes like the lace on a christening bonnet. Behind her the bakehouse door creaked and her son Abel came out with flour to his elbows, yawning, carrying the first tray of loaves.

"It's still standing," she said. "Which means the baker still owes the village its bread."

Abel set the tray on the wall and looked at the stem, where two leaves curled like cut paper and a trail of dots ran down to the soil. "I promised Ada I'd stop pricking the lace pattern into the crusts," he said. "Fern shapes, that's all. She says the loaves look like they've been chewed by mice."

The old woman laughed and told him the flower would open the morning he kept his word, and not a day before. He took the tray inside. When the sun cleared the ridge the seventh point had unfolded, and Abel stood in the doorway with a knife in his hand, scoring the first loaf with a fern, because he had promised nothing about the ones that came after.