Pencil line drawing of a woman's face and shoulders with flowers in her hair and leaves along her neck, shown as a flash design sketch with no visible body placement.

Pencil sketch of a woman with flowers in her hair

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A loose pencil portrait of a woman looking up and to the side, with flowers and leaves woven through her hair and trailing down past her ear and neck. The linework is soft and layered, with light shading on the face and hair and some construction lines still visible. The sketch is drawn in blue-grey pencil on cream paper, with two coloured pencils resting on the right edge.

Botanical Woman Portrait Flower Leaves Sketch Hair Earring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bell at the pass has been silent since the thaw, so you climb the switchbacks alone, your satchel knocking against your hip and the paper seed packets rattling like dice. Halfway up, where the path bends round a leaning slab of grey rock, a small wooden hut stands with its shutters painted the blue of a jay's wing. Nobody has lived in it for years, but someone keeps a clay jar of water on the sill, and the water is fresh.

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The keeper of the pass, a thin old man called Teodor, told you in the valley that the wild lilies only open where the wind comes through hardest. He said that anyone who walks the road in spring carries seed away in their hair without knowing it, and that is how the flowers have travelled down every valley in the range. You thought it a fine story for a man who sold cheese by weight. Now you kneel in the scree beside the hut and find the stems already rooted in the cracks, each bloom turned to face the road you came up by.

You cut one stem, though it hurts you to do it, and tuck it behind your ear where the wind can reach it. You fill your pocket with the dry black seed that has fallen onto the stones, and you think of Teodor, who must have done the same thing every year until his knees gave out.

At the bend you stop and look back. The blue shutters are closed. The jar on the sill is full. Far below, the valley has begun to ring, very faintly, as if someone has climbed up to the bell after all.