Botanical flash design of black scrolling vines, grey swirls and pink lilies, drawn without any body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink lily and black scrollwork design

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

The design shows two sprays of pink lilies with pointed leaves, joined by bold black scrolling vines and curls. Light grey swirls sit behind the black linework, adding depth and a softer layer. Pink flowers and leaves are set against a plain white background, with the composition running diagonally from top left to bottom right.

Botanical Lily Flower Vine Scroll Swirl Leaf

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down, the lot of you, and mind the cat, she's been sleeping on the gate hinge again. You want to know why Mrs Tolley never cut back the vine on her wall? I'll tell it my way, not the way the parish magazine printed it.

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Her husband Albert forged that gate himself in the winter of the big frost, curling every bar into a scroll so the iron looked like it was growing. Black as a crow's wing, he used to say, and twice as stubborn. Behind it he let the old grey bramble of the hedge run wild, the one that wouldn't die no matter how he swore at it. Then one June the lilies came up out of the bed by the gate, pink as a sunburnt cheek, three of them opened in a single night.

That summer the vine ran up through the ironwork and wrapped the scrolls until nobody could tell which curl was Albert's and which was the plant's. The neighbours complained about the mess. Albert didn't. He sat on the step with his pipe and watched the lilies lean toward the path, down and across the lawn, as if they had somewhere to be and were in no hurry to get there.

When he died, Mrs Tolley cut back everything except that one spray. She said the iron and the flowers had come to some arrangement between them, and she wasn't going to be the one to interrupt. So if you're passing and the gate's open, go and look at the lilies. Mind the fourth step, mind. It still wobbles.