Black and grey realism tattoo of a multi-storey pagoda on the upper arm, with gnarled tree branches running down the forearm.

Pagoda and gnarled tree on an arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A tall, multi-storey pagoda with tiered roofs and railed balconies is tattooed on the upper arm, with a gnarled, leafless tree whose branches wind down the forearm. The linework is fine and the shading is smooth and detailed, with soft dark washes behind the pagoda suggesting cloud or mist. The design is entirely black and grey and fills the arm in one continuous composition against a blurred, pale background.

Realism Upper arm Forearm Tree Branches Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had closed the pass for three days when Oriko found the stranger's boots by the hearth, still wet, though the door had been barred since dusk. Her mother said the mountain sent guests like this every hard winter, and that they should be fed and not asked their names.

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The stranger came down at the lamp hour, a thin man with a lacquered box under one arm. He asked for a room on the top floor of the old pagoda behind the inn, the one with the railed balcony where the dead tree grew up through the boards. Oriko's mother set down the rice bowl and said that tree had been bare since her own grandmother was a girl, and no one slept up there. The man only nodded and climbed the stairs, counting each step under his breath as if he had paid for every one.

In the morning the balcony rail was furred with frost and the stranger was gone, though his tracks went up the tiers and not down. Oriko climbed after him, past roofs with their corners turned up like a bird's wings, and found the box open on the highest floor. Inside lay a folded square of black paper, and on it, in ink that had not dried, a single bare branch drawn with great care, its roots running off the edge of the page into a bank of cloud.

She carried the paper down and pinned it beside the door, where the snow could not reach it. Each winter after that the inn kept its lamps lit late for whoever was walking the pass, and each spring the old tree at the back put out one pale leaf, which her mother swept away before it could darken.