Black and grey peony and rose tattoos on a forearm, with a shaded circular motif between them, viewed with a person wearing a white printed top and black trousers.

Peony and rose on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large peony bloom with shaded petals and leaves runs down the upper forearm, with a second rose and leaves below it. A round, densely hatched black and grey motif sits between the two floral pieces. The linework and shading are detailed, with soft greyscale gradients, and the photograph is taken at waist height against a blurred interior.

Botanical Realism Forearm Peony Rose Leaves Circle Hatching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The moon has been full for three nights now and it hangs over the water like an engraving someone has gone over too many times with a fine pen, every line crossed by another. Mr Aldous says it is only the light thrown back off the swell, but I have stopped listening to him about anything that glows. He spends his evenings in the hold with the Wardian cases, talking to the peony roots as though they might answer.

They have not. Two dozen bare crowns came aboard at Cape Town, wrapped in sacking and smelling of wet earth, and one has already sent up a shoot pale as candle wax. The roses are sturdier. Mr Aldous says the rose will grow anywhere, which is why England has so many of them and so few sensible gardens. I told him that sounded like a description of me, and he laughed, which I took as a kindness.

The night the first shoot came up, I went down with a lantern and found him asleep against the crates, his drawing book open on his chest. He had sketched the moon there, carefully, shading it in hatched rings so it looked more like a seed head than a sky. Underneath, in that cramped hand of his, he had written: Keep them out of the salt.

I am going to keep one of his crowns for myself when we dock, and I want you to take it to the cottage behind the chapel. Plant it facing east, where the light comes first. If it flowers, it will be the colour of the cloth in your mother's trunk, and you will know I was thinking of you the whole way across.

Love, Hester