Painted tattoo design of two red roses and two grey lilies with dark leaves and black swirling stems on a cream background, with no body placement shown.

Red roses and grey lilies with swirling vines

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

The design shows two red roses, one upper right and one lower left, with two grey lilies between them and dark leaves and black scrolling vines framing the composition. The roses are painted with bold red tones and pink highlights, while the lilies and some leaves are shaded in soft greys with black accents. The motif is set on a plain cream background, with the lines and shading following the petals and stems.

Botanical Neo-trad Rose Lily Leaf Swirl Vine Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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We are three weeks out from Falmouth and the lilies have gone grey. Mr Pryce said they would, the damp in the hold gets into everything, but I did not believe him until I went down this morning with the lamp and saw the white of their throats turned to pewter. The two roses I carried aboard in my own coat are still red, though. I have kept them on the lee side of the galley where the stove warms them at night, and they are putting out new leaves the colour of old copper.

You will laugh at me, but I have been reading the vine tendrils the way other men read the Bible. Mr Pryce calls them the curl of the swell. I think they look like the rope the second mate coils on the capstan, round and round until it makes a spiral you could hang a lantern from. Last Sunday I sketched them in the back of the log while the watch changed, black ink on a sheet of cream paper, and the Captain looked over my shoulder and asked if I meant to be a painter now.

Here is the thing I have not told Mother. The lilies were meant for the grave in Valparaíso, for Uncle Tom, who wrote that he had planted nothing but thistles since the fever. I wanted him to have something that smelled like home. Now I am not sure they will survive the landing, and the roses, which I bought only because the nursery woman in Penryn would not let me leave without them, are the ones that look as though they might.

I will write again from the Horn if the weather lets me. Tell Mother the roses are fine. Tell her I am learning that the things that go grey are not always the things that die.

Yours, Will