Black and grey realism tattoo of an open pocket watch with cogs and Roman numerals on the forearm.

Pocket watch and gears on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large pocket watch sits open on the forearm, with its face, hands and visible internal gears rendered in fine detail. Large Roman numerals and cogs extend around the watch, with light, sweeping rays fading into the skin at the edges. The piece uses soft grey shading and high contrast black ink with no colour, and the composition fills the frame from elbow to wrist.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Gear Cog Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The king's clockmaker had been dead three winters when the watch came up from the cellar still ticking, its brass case warm as new bread. Nobody in Corrandale could say who had wound it last.

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Old Mab Tollery carried it to the palace on a cushion of grey velvet and set it open on the council table. Its face bore twelve numerals cut in the old way, and behind the glass the wheels turned like slow beasts in a field. Every cog had a name scratched on its rim: Ember, Lark, Sorrow, Fen. The chancellor wanted the hour held still so the harvest tithe could be counted twice, and he promised Mab a purse of silver if she managed it. She said she would stop the hour if she was paid in years instead.

She sat up through the night with a jeweller's loupe and a pot of sweet oil, lifting out the wheels one at a time. Each time a cog came free, the morning light crept further across the table, pale as fingers, until the whole hall was full of long white rays. The chancellor came down white-faced at dawn to find the hands had not moved at all, and Mab was asleep with her cheek resting on the case.

When the messenger asked what she had done, she said she had only let the gears go home. She had carried each one down to the millrace and let the current take it to the sea, and the watch now kept only the hour she was sitting in. The tithe was counted once that year, as it always had been, and Corrandale kept its time as it had always done, one tick at a time.