Pencil and ink sketch of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, surrounded by leaves and scrolls, drawn as a neo-traditional tattoo design with no body part shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with leaves and scrolls

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows an open pocket watch with a Roman numeral dial, hands and a small subsidiary dial, set among shaded leaves with visible veins and curling scroll shapes. The linework is dark and bold, with hatching and stippling used to shade the watch case and leaves. The design is in black and grey only, and the watch is centred with the leaves and scrolls framing it on the left and below.

Neo-trad Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Leaves Scroll Swirl Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The watch stopped again on Tuesday, hands sitting just past the twelve like a man who has forgotten his errand. Mr Pryce at the chandlery says the mainspring is tired, and that a watch which has kept lighthouse time for forty years is entitled to a rest. I told him the lamp never rests, so why should the watch. He laughed and sent me home with a sandwich wrapped in the Gazette.

I have been winding it each evening at the foot of the tower, where the ivy has climbed the wall and the leaves are browning at their edges. The light above us turns every eleven seconds, and I count it against the small dial at the side, the one your grandfather swore was the only honest part of the thing. Gulls come down over the rocks and the spray curls up white like the scrolls on the cottage gate.

Pryce's boy took it to Hollis Street for a new glass, and it came back with the hands bent a fraction so they stop catching on the numerals. He says it will run until somebody needs it to. I think that means you, so I am keeping it wound in the drawer by the stove, next to your letters, which I have not reread out of spite.

Come home by the ninth. The supply boat goes out Thursday and the weather is set fair. I'll take the watch up the tower and hold it against the lamp, and when the beam sweeps the bay at half past seven we'll see whether the thing still knows what time it is.

Love, Ruth