Colour traditional style tattoo of a pocket watch, green roses and a banner reading December 25, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch and roses with December 25 banner

Traditional · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows an open pocket watch with a white dial, Roman-style numerals and a beaded chain, set among dark green leaves and two rosebuds. A banner across the lower centre reads December 25, and a yellow-orange ribbon wraps behind the design. Bold black outlines define the forms, with soft shading and bright colour fills on the watch case, leaves and ribbons.

Traditional Neo-trad Pocket watch Clock Rose Rosebud Banner Ribbon Bead Chain Leaves Date

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tobias,

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The watch came back to me on the fourth of December, wrapped in a handkerchief the colour of old marigolds, with a note from Captain Hesk asking whether it could be made to tell the right day again. He says it has been running fast since the siege. I told him a watch cannot run fast on a battlefield, only lose itself, and he laughed the way he does when he has been drinking and is trying not to show it.

The case is brass worn to pink at the hinge, and someone has pressed a wild rose into the lid, a bud and a full bloom, with the stems wound round the winder. Inside, the hands had stopped a little after eleven. I oiled the pivots, changed the mainspring, and set it going on the bench by the window so the frost on the glass could catch the light. By the second evening it was keeping time to the minute, and I wrote the date on a slip of card and tucked it under the lid the way Father used to: December 25, in my best copperplate, because that is the day the captain promised to come home by.

He did not come home on the twenty-fifth. The post came on the twenty-sixth instead, with a folded flag and no letter, only a pressed rosebud the colour of rust. I have put it in the box with the watch. Mother says I should give the watch to the chapel for the poor box, but I have not decided. I think I will wait until spring, when the roses come back along the garden wall, and then I will see whether the hands still agree with the card.