Close-up of a small fine line botanical tattoo of purple statice sprigs with green stems on the upper arm, shown in two side by side photos.

Purple statice sprigs on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A small cluster of purple flowers on thin green stems, with a few pink accents, sits on the upper arm. The linework is delicate and fine, with soft shading in the petals and stems. The left panel shows the tattoo at a wider angle, and the right panel shows a closer crop against plain skin.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Flower Sprig Stem Lavender

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bell over the front door rang twice before Nell had finished counting the teaspoons, which meant Mr Oakes wanted his breakfast early and his newspaper folded the right way for once. She set the tray down in the back parlour, wiped her hands on her apron and went to the window. Beyond the garden wall the cliff dropped to a grey sea, and along its lip the statice grew in ragged clumps, purple heads on wiry stems that the wind had been bending since March.

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Mr Oakes had been a surveyor before he retired to Gull Cottage, and he still walked the cliff path each morning with a pair of secateurs he never seemed to need. He came back with a single sprig every day and laid it between the pages of an old ledger on the hall table. "Everlastings," he told her once, turning a stem to the light. "They keep their colour when everything else has given up." Nell didn't ask who the ledger was for. She had learned that questions at breakfast only made him slower.

On the Tuesday, the ledger lay open at a fresh page with a folded note tucked under its cover. The bill for the month was there too, marked paid, and beneath it in his careful capitals: PUT THIS TOWARDS THE ROOF. PICK THE FAR END, THEY ARE BEST. Nell walked the cliff path in her slippers with the wind pulling at her hair, found the far end where the ground fell away in ledges, and cut until her palm was full of purple.

That evening she pressed the stems between the pages beside his, one sprig for every day he had been gone up the path. The colour held. In the morning the bell rang once, and she went to the hall without hurrying, because the house was quiet now and the ledger would be waiting.