Colour tattoo of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, autumn leaves and a banner reading until the very end, in neo-traditional style on the upper chest.

Pocket watch and autumn leaves on chest

Neo-trad · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A pocket watch with Roman numerals sits at the centre of the design, with a teal case, a pale pink face and clock hands. Orange and yellow autumn leaves and dark splashes surround it, and a white banner across the lower half reads until the very end in black lettering. Bold black outlines and soft watercolour-like shading give the piece a neo-traditional look, shown on the upper chest with a ringed hand holding back a white top.

Neo-trad Chest Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Leaves Banner Lettering Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clockmaker of Little Hollin kept his shop open until the leaves came down, because that was when the watches came in. Farmers brought him pocket watches that had stopped in their waistcoats, and he would open each case with a thumbnail and tell them what was wrong with it. Most of it was dust, or a spring that had tired. Old Amos Penrose brought his father's watch in the third week of October, wrapped in a handkerchief that smelled of pipe smoke, and asked whether it could be made to run again.

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The clockmaker turned it over in the lamplight. The face had faded to the colour of weak tea, and the hands had stopped at a quarter past nine. He said it could run, but it would need a day or two, and the old man should come back when the maples on the green had gone bare. Amos nodded and said he had waited forty years already, so a few more days would not hurt him.

When Amos returned, the clockmaker gave him the watch and would not take his money. The ticking was soft and certain, like a heart in a quiet room. Amos held it to his ear for a long time, then opened the case and found a scrap of paper folded inside the lid. It was in his father's hand and said only, in the old words, until the very end. Outside, the last leaves turned over in the gutter and the clockmaker set the kettle on, because there was nothing more to be mended today.