Neo-traditional flash drawing of a white rose with purple and yellow shading, green leaves, swirling scrolls and small bubbles on a white background.

Purple and white rose design with swirls

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A marker-drawn rose design sits at the centre of the sheet, with white petals shaded grey and outlined in black, and a purple and yellow bud at its heart. Green leaves with yellow highlights and wrapped stems frame the flower, and purple and magenta scrolls curl out from the top and bottom. A lilac speckled haze and small blue bubbles surround the motif, all set on plain white paper.

Neo-trad Rose Leaves Swirl Scroll Bubble Bud Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Cook Ada Penhallow had kept a pot of rose cuttings alive on the galley sill for three winters, and the ship's boys had long since stopped asking why. The Mary Tallis ran south with the wind behind her, and each morning the spray from the bow came in through the open hatch and dried on the glass in small silver rings.

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One night the bud opened early. Ada woke to the smell of it, sweet under the tar and the cold fat, and climbed the ladder in her shift with a lamp. The petals were white, greying where the light did not reach, and a purple heart sat folded in the middle as tight as a fist. The bo'sun said it was bad luck to carry a flower aboard without a name. Ada said it had one already, her mother's, and that ended the matter.

The sea got up before the bells. Purple curls of wind came over the rail, the hatches were battened, and the fire in the galley guttered out. Ada went down through the water sloshing across the floorboards and lifted the pot to her chest, then stood in the dark and said plainly that she would give the flower to the sea if the sea would give the men back their ropes and their light. She opened the port and let the pot go. By dawn the wind had dropped to a sigh.

When the sun came up, the pot was back on the sill, dry, its soil dark and wet with salt. The bud was closed again, wrapped in green weed. On the rim sat one small blue bubble that did not pop, and Ada left it there all day because nobody aboard would touch it.