Colour tattoo of a red lily with green leaves and black vine swirls on the side of the torso, in a botanical style, placed on the ribs.

Red lily and vines on side torso

Botanical · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A red lily with a dark centre and green leaves sits at the centre of the design, surrounded by black vine scrolls with dotted accents. Solid colour fills the flower and leaves, while the vines and small star-like marks are drawn in black, with the outlines bold and clean. The photograph is taken at an angle with warm lighting, with a black top at the upper edge and a waistband at the bottom.

Botanical Ribs Lily Flower Vine Leaves Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third wave that season took two of the Wardian cases clean off the rail, and Ada Pell spent the next watch on her knees in the hold with a bucket and a rag, trying to save what was left of the lilies. Most were black mush by morning. One tiger lily in the far case had kept its head up through all of it, a single stalk with a bud the colour of a wet brick, and Ada sat beside it with the lantern swinging until her eyes stung.

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She trained its shoots up the wire the way her mother had taught her in the nursery at Clifton, coaxing each tendril around the mesh and pinching off the ones that wanted to sprawl. Along the coiled curls she tied scraps of black silk left over from a mourning bonnet she had never been asked to finish. At night, when the hatch was open for air, she could see stars through the grating and count them against the lily's leaves, one for each green blade still standing.

On the fortieth day out, Captain Ruddock came down with his lamp and said the case had to go. The ship was low in the water and the bulbs were worth nothing at Calcutta now, he said, not with the rot in them. Ada didn't argue. She only asked him to wait until dawn.

At first light she carried the case up the companionway and set it on the forecastle, where the sun came over the swell like a coin. The bud split open in the warmth, six red petals curling back, dark freckles at the throat. Ruddock stood a long time with his cap in his hands. Then he ordered the case lashed down, and the lily stayed on deck, facing east.