Two hands held palms out showing a black and grey realistic portrait tattoo on the back of one hand, lettering across the fingers, and a pink peony on the forearm.

Portrait hand tattoo with finger lettering

Realism · Hand · Mixed · Photo

A close view of two palms facing the camera. The left hand carries a black and grey realistic tattoo of a grim, horned figure with shaded eyes and long hair that runs from the back of the hand onto the palm. The fingers of the right hand carry bold, blackwork-style letters spread across the digits, and a red and pink peony with green leaves sits on the forearm at the top right.

Realism Lettering Botanical Hand Forearm Figure Portrait Horn Peony Flower Lettering Finger Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Bring the shears, Nell, the peony won't wait for the church bells." Old Hob said it without looking up from the north wall of Corvane House, where the last of the light lay across the paving like spilt milk. He had horns like a ram's, grey and curled, and eyes so deeply shaded that the village children swore they were painted on. Nobody in Thornwick had ever seen him hurry, and nobody had seen his lamp go out before the rooks began.

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The princess had lain in the glasshouse since the first frost, pale as tissue paper, her breath fogging the glass each morning and clearing a little more slowly each time. Only the peony on the north wall could keep her, Hob said, and it bloomed once a year for one evening. It had to be cut at dusk, carried barefoot through the orchard, and laid on her pillow before the bells. The price was written on the fingers of whoever carried it, letter by letter, so the debt could be read at a glance.

Nell cut the stem. The bloom was heavier than any flower had a right to be, red as a coal and cool as river stone. The orchard grass soaked her to the ankle. When she laid it on the pillow, the princess opened her eyes, looked at the flower, then at Nell's hands, and smiled as if she had been expecting a different messenger.

"The debt was never yours to pay," the princess said. Behind the glass, Hob stood with his long hair stirring in a wind that did not reach the garden. He watched without moving, and when Nell looked down, the letters on her knuckles had rearranged themselves into his name. He took the spent peony from the pillow without a word, and the princess closed her eyes, breathing easily for the first time since the frost.