Black and grey realism tattoo of an ornate cross with a red heart centre, wings and a rose, on the inner forearm.

Ornate cross with rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

An ornate cross with scrolled filigree dominates the forearm, with a red heart set in its centre and soft feathered wings behind it. A large rose sits below the cross, and the shading is smooth and detailed. Apart from the small red heart, the piece is rendered in black and grey ink against the arm and background.

Realism Forearm Cross Heart Wing Rose

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boat from Oban has already gone by the time you reach the slipway, and the only other soul on the quay is a man hosing diesel off the steps. He tells you the mason's cottage is past the kirk, the one with the blue door that never quite shuts. You thank him and carry the chisel case up the hill anyway, because Morag's letter said the cross had to be finished before the funeral, and nobody else on Eilean Dubh can cut filigree the way she could.

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Inside, the workshop smells of wet slate and linseed. The cross lies face up on trestles, a block of pale sandstone worked so fine that the scrolls look like frost on a window. Someone has already painted the centre, a small raised heart, and the paint is still tacky. Morag's grandson, Callum, is twelve and wants to know why it needs a heart at all. You don't tell him that the widow asked for one, or that she wanted the wings carved behind the cross as though something were still lifting it off the hill.

You work through the afternoon with the window open. Rain comes in sideways off the Atlantic and you keep your hands moving, following the grain, reading the stone the way Morag taught you, by listening for the point to ring true. At the foot of the cross you cut a rose, petal by petal, and it is the hardest thing you have ever done with a claw chisel, because every curl has to bite deeper than the last or the light won't catch it.

At dusk you wrap the cross in sacking and take it down to the kirk on the cart. The widow is waiting by the gate with her shawl pulled tight. She lifts a corner of the sacking, studies the heart for a long time, and then asks you to leave the old tide line on the wall behind the grave, the faint crust where the sea once reached, because that is where her husband used to sit with his pipe. You say you will. In the morning the boat comes back for you, and you find you are glad of the long crossing home.