Traditional style colour tattoo on a calf, showing a red rose inside a black-outlined diamond with a sprig of leaves above and a folded crane shape behind.

Red rose in a diamond with leaves on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A red rose with white highlights sits inside a black-outlined diamond, with a sprig of ochre leaves in a second diamond above it. Bold black outlines and solid red fill are used, with grey shading behind the shapes, and a diagonal crane-like outline extends to the left. Two close-up photographs of the same leg show the design against wood flooring, with other tattoo work visible lower down.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the square of paper on the third night out from Falmouth, tucked beneath the lid of the bosun's tin where the spare shackles live. It was torn from a seed catalogue, a red rose printed on one side, and someone has folded it into a crane, all sharp keel and outstretched wing. Inside the bird's belly a second diamond of card has been pressed flat, and on it a sprig of ochre leaves has been drawn in pencil, stalk after stalk.

Keep reading

Ada Pelling, the bosun, says the steward who owned the tin left at Montevideo owing the company four pounds and a pair of good boots. Every watch he folded a crane and left it on the galley hatch for the cook to find, and the cook would say nothing and pocket it. Nobody on board knew whether he was sweet on someone ashore or simply couldn't sleep. Ada shrugs and says the only thing she ever learned from him was that paper keeps longer than men do.

You try to fold one yourself at the rail, with the wind pushing the wake white behind the stern. The wings come out lopsided. The third attempt tears along the rose's outline, so you flatten the scrap against your knee and smooth the leaves with your thumb. Somewhere past the Bay of Biscay the Cornish light is a grey smudge you can no longer name. You let the crane go. It rises, catches the air off the funnel, and turns back toward the land it came from, keel first, the rose facing the wind.

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