Ornate cross with rosary beads on upper arm
Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo
An ornate cross with scrolled filigree and teal gem-like centres sits on the upper arm, with a rosary of black beads wrapping around and across it. The cross is shaded in greys and black with smooth gradients, while the gems and small leaf-like accents carry teal and green colour. The design fills the frame diagonally, with the beads trailing off to the top and bottom edges.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Ruth, the lamp's gone again, so I'm writing this by the range with the kettle ticking. Mrs Dunning came in this morning wanting the cross back. You remember the one, the filigree thing with the green glass stones Mum kept wrapped in her good handkerchief. Dad sold it to Harold at the pawn counter in March to cover the coal, and Mrs Dunning's boy bought it off him for her birthday without knowing what it was. She stood at our counter holding her purse like it might bite her.
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I didn't know what to say, so I gave her the beads first. They were in the tin with the buttons, black glass knobs strung on cotton gone the colour of weak tea, and I started counting them the way Mum taught us, one for every bead in the Hail Mary, until my thumb was sore. Mrs Dunning laughed at me, then stopped laughing and said her own mother had worn the same beads down to nothing.
We settled on four shillings and a promise to come back for the cross when the boy's wages came through. She took the rosary home instead, looped twice round her wrist like a bracelet. I watched her cross the square in the rain, the beads swinging from her hand, and thought how the teal stones would catch the streetlamp outside the Co-op.
Write soon. Tell me if Dad's still sulking about the coal.
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