Black and grey raven tattoo with peony blooms and scrollwork running down the thigh, drawn in a neo-traditional style.

Raven and peony scroll on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A bird perches in profile on a vertical composition across the thigh, framed by peony flowers and curling scrollwork leaves. The feathers are rendered with fine black linework and layered tonal detail, while dotwork and stippling add grey shading to the body and foliage. The image is in black and grey, with a hand holding white tissue at the top edge and a pale studio background.

Neo-trad Botanical Dotwork Thigh Raven Bird Peony Flower Scroll Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marian, The raven came back on Tuesday, the same as it did last winter, and sat on the lamp bracket above platform two as though it held the timetable. Mr Pryce swears it is the bird that took a sandwich from the guard's hand in March, but I told him ravens are all the same to the trains. It watches the 6.40 out of Halewood the way you used to watch the kettle, as if sheer attention might make it boil faster.

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I have started keeping the lost property ledger properly, the way you said I should. Umbrellas, a clarinet case, one glove, a baby's shoe with a bell sewn into the heel. Last Thursday a gentleman left a bunch of peonies wrapped in brown paper on the bench by the ticket hatch, still wet, and nobody came back for them. I put them in the water jug in the porters' room. By Friday the petals had gone the colour of old rose, and the bird was tapping at the window glass, looking in at them like a bailiff.

Do you remember what Father used to say about the scrolled ironwork on the old footbridge? That the smiths made the curls so tight nobody could see where one leaf ended and the next began. I think about that when the signal lamps go amber and the rain runs down the iron. The bird sits in its frame of leaves and never once looks down at the rails.

Write soon. Tell me if the sea air has done anything for Mother's chest, and whether you have found a use for the wicker hamper I left in the carriage.

Yours, Ada