Black and grey drawing of an ornate cross with floral centre and scrolling filigree, shown on a plain white background as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate filigree cross design

Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical cross drawn in black outline and grey shading on a plain white background. The arms and upright are filled with scrolling filigree, small fleur-de-lis style tips and a large flower-like rosette where the arms meet. The shading uses light and dark grey fills to give the ornamentation depth, and the composition is centred with no other elements.

Cross Filigree Scrollwork Flower Rosette Ornament Fleur-de-lis

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven door is already warm when you arrive, and the flour on the bench has the grey look it gets before the light comes. Mr Okafor is not in yet, so the key to the back gate is where he said it would be, under the tin of mustard on the top shelf. You fill the big urn, light the second ring, and start on the hot cross buns, because nobody else will pipe them this year.

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The piping bag is his old one, stiff with dried paste. You have watched him do the crosses a hundred times, a steady wrist and a held breath, but you have never managed the curl at the ends. Tonight you practise on a sheet of baking parchment: scrolls that spill into one another, a small lily tip at each arm, and a round flower where the lines meet. It looks like the iron gate of the churchyard across the road, the one with the rust you keep promising to scrape.

By the time the first van rattles past the window, you have forty buns in rows and a tray of ornate crosses that are wobbly but plainly intended. Mr Okafor comes through the back door at six, sees the tray, and says nothing for long enough that you start to apologise. He picks up one bun, turns it in the light, and taps the rosette with his thumb.

"Who taught you that?" he asks. You shrug and say nobody, which is true, and he nods as though he expected as much. "Then you'll do the Sunday ones too," he says, and goes to light the big oven. Behind him it ticks as it heats, and you start the next row, finer than the last.