Full back tattoo in colour and black and grey, showing red poppies, pink flowers, black lace patterning and a dragon head at the lower back.

Poppies, lace and dragon across a full back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A full back piece shows red poppies and pink blossoms over a black lace pattern that winds across the upper back. A dragon's head with a red eye and cloud-like detail sits at the lower back, with feathers and fine shading lining the design. Red and pink ink sits against the grey and black linework and shading, which gives the piece a mix of colour and monochrome.

Botanical Realism Back Poppy Flower Blossom Lace Dragon Feather Cloud Snake

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every late summer the apples on Hollin Hill came heavy and late, and the old orchard keeper, Mattie Crowe, went up the rows with a basket on each arm. Her grandmother had told her the hill had a dragon asleep in the roots of the oldest tree, and that it kept the hail away as long as nobody woke it. Mattie did not believe in dragons until the summer the hail came early and stripped the blossom from every tree but one.

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That evening she found the dragon in the lower orchard, its chin resting on the wall and one red eye open. It was grey as wet slate, and a line of black thread ran down its back like a vine that had decided to grow along a spine. Its voice was dry and polite. "I cannot hold the clouds without something to bind them," it said. "Your grandmother's lace bobbin is in the loft. Bring me the length of it and the hail will go elsewhere."

Mattie climbed to the loft, found the bobbin under a dust sheet, and unwound the lace until the thread ran across the boards and down the ladder. She carried it out in both hands. The dragon wound it slowly round the clouds, and where the thread touched the grass, poppies came up red as cut cherries, and pink blossom opened on the low branches out of season. The hail turned back over the hill and fell into the next valley.

When the apples were picked, Mattie found a grey feather on the loft sill, soft as ash. She kept it in the tin with her grandmother's bobbin, which was empty now. Each year after, the poppies came back between the rows and the red eye watched from the wall, and nobody in the village asked where the lace had gone.