Black line drawing of an ornate skull design filled with leaves, scrolls and cell-like patterns, shown as a flash design with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate skull with leaves and scrollwork

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical skull is drawn in black outline on a white background. Its cranium and eye sockets are filled with vines, leaves, scrolls and a honeycomb-like pattern of cells. The linework is even and bold, with no shading or colour.

Botanical Geometric Skull Leaves Vine Scroll Filigree Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody danced under the carved boss in the Hollin barn until the lamps had been counted. There were nine lamps, and a tenth hung over the door unlit, because the boss above it was a skull that the joiner Ashe had cut into the oak the winter he came up the dale with a bag of chisels and no wife. He had carved vines pouring out of its eye holes and leaves crowding its brow, and the cells of its cheeks were so fine a man could count them only by candle. When the parish asked his price he named none. He said only that every Michaelmas someone must dance beneath it who was not afraid of it.

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For forty years the dance went to whoever was bold enough, and the barn stayed full. Then came a year when the fiddler was a girl called Hester Dunn, who had buried two brothers and did not believe in joiners. She stepped out under the skull with her skirts swinging and laughed at the grin above her. The tune went on. Halfway through she felt the vines brush her hair, though no draught moved in the barn, and the boards beneath her feet went soft as moss.

The villagers say she danced until the last lamp guttered, then walked straight out into the lane humming, and was never seen on the dale road again. The next morning the boss had new leaves cut into it, pale and fresh, and the honeycomb cells of the cheeks were full of small green shoots.