Realism tattoo on a forearm showing a red rose and a grey rose with a pocket watch and chain near the wrist, shown in three side-by-side photos.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red and grey roses with pocket watch on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm tattoo of two roses, one large red bloom in the centre and one grey rose above it, with dark leaves and a pocket watch with a chain at the wrist. The roses use smooth, detailed shading and the watch face has fine numerals and engraved detail. The image is a three-panel composition of the same arm, with the red rose as the main colour and the rest in black and grey.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Pocket watch Chain Leaves Clock face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Tamsin, the watch stopped again on Tuesday, in the middle of the Lantern Mass, and the Queen's ladies pretended not to notice that I stood at the back of the cathedral with my hand cupped over my pocket like a thief. You will remember it was your grandfather's. I have wound it every morning since the funeral, and every morning it has lost a quarter hour by dusk.

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The rose garden below the east wall has come into bloom early this year, which the gardeners say is a bad omen for the harvest. Three of the old red bushes flowered at once, deep as spilled wine, and Lord Arbel had the blooms cut for the banquet hall. I saw one on the steward's table with its petals already browning at the edges. The grey roses along the wall, the ones your mother called ghost-roses, have not opened at all, though they are weeks past their time.

I took the watch to Master Oswin in the lower market, who studied it for a long while under his glass and then said the trouble was not in the works. Someone had set the hands to match the bell at the gate, he said, and that bell has been wrong since the flood. He would not take a coin for it. He only asked whether the red rose was still blooming, and when I said yes he nodded as if he had been expecting the question.

So I am sending the watch back to you with the carter, the glass cover polished and the chain mended. Set it by the window in the morning, not by the bell. When the last red petal drops, the hour will be ours again. Do not write back to tell me I am being foolish. Only wind it, and keep the pale one in the drawer until I come home.