Colour realism tattoo of an hourglass with a lit candle in the upper bulb and a bare tree in the lower bulb, on the upper arm.

Realistic hourglass with candle and dead tree

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

An hourglass sits within a dark metal frame, with a burning candle visible through the amber-lit upper glass and a pale sand line below it. The lower bulb shows a leafless tree silhouetted against a grey, moonlit sky. Smooth shading, glass highlights and reflections give the piece a strong three-dimensional look, with amber, yellow and grey tones against a dark green-grey background.

Realism Upper arm Hourglass Candle Tree Sand Moon Sky

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You steal the hourglass from the Lantern Tower of Vael Morrow on the night the Crown sends its tithe-men north. Nobody in the kingdom trusts sand anymore, since the tax-clerks began weighing it at every gate, but the glass still keeps true, and the old warden burns a candle beneath it so the watch can read the hours. You take both, candle and glass, and carry them down the spiral stair with your palm cupped around the flame.

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Beyond the walls the moor is grey with frost, and the dead oak at the crossroads stands exactly where it stood when your mother was a girl. You set the hourglass on its stone. The sand has already thinned to a pale thread through the neck, and the candle in the upper bulb has burned down to a bead of amber. The horns sound from the gate. You have until the last grain falls, and you suspect the warden sized that candle to burn out first, a trick to make the watch believe the night is shorter than it is.

You crouch with your back to the oak and wait. The flame shrinks, the horns go quiet, and somewhere a man calls out a name that is not yours, so that for a moment you almost answer to it. Then the last grain drops, the candle goes out, and the moon in the lower glass is the only light left on the moor.

You turn the hourglass over before you leave, because the warden taught you that a glass left lying still is a glass that lies. The sand begins again. Behind you the tree stays pale in its bulb, waiting for the next thief who needs an hour of dark, and you walk north where no clerk can weigh you.