Black geometric tattoo of a radial mandala with stacked sprigs on the top of a foot, shown in two side-by-side photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Radial mandala and sprig design on the top of a foot

Geometric · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a large radial mandala with concentric rings and short tick marks, with a small central star, sitting above a tall sprig with leaves. Two matching sprigs rise from the top of the foot, and the design is shown in two side-by-side photographs. The solid black linework and dotted ornament are sharp and evenly applied, with no colour ink.

Geometric Blackwork Other Mandala Sprig Leaves Rosette Circle Star Radial pattern

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hesper, the third ring of the rosette on deck nine has gone green again, and I have stopped pretending the frost on the lamps is a fault. Mr Okafor says the sprigs are lying about their age, that the fern-stock we grafted at the last dock is older than the log says. I told him the log was written by people who wanted us to sleep easier, and he laughed, which is the most he has laughed since the reactor fed back in March.

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The chart is what I want you to see. Every tick mark around the outer ring is a cutting we have banked, one per day of the last winter-cycle, so when you look at the wheel you are reading a calendar and a granary at once. The little star in the middle is the seed vault itself, six hatches under glass. Two sprigs rise from either side of the wheel, and the leaves on each are the varieties we swore we would keep even if the hull split: sorrel, bitter cress, the blue-stemmed oat Dad coaxed out of a bag of birdseed.

Last night I counted the ticks again and came up one short. Someone had scratched a tick out of the outer ring with a thumbnail, pressing hard into the soil. I asked the night watch who, and she shrugged and said it was the child from block C who sleeps under the stair, the one who asked me last week whether plants could remember being moved.

I have not answered her yet. I am going to take her down to the vault tomorrow and show her the first hatch, where the label is in your handwriting, and tell her that yes, they remember, and so do we, which is the only kind of forward I know how to plant. Come home soon, or write back with the sprig names so I can copy them onto the hull.

Love, Ottilie