Traditional colour tattoo of a red rose with green leaves and an orange Deathly Hallows symbol, with a lettered banner, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and Deathly Hallows banner on arm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A red rose with dark green leaves sits behind an orange Deathly Hallows symbol, a triangle enclosing a circle with a vertical line, set over a teal-grey circle. Two banners curve across the design, carrying lettering that reads part of a quotation. Bold black outlines and flat, solid fills give the piece a classic traditional look, with the colour dominating the composition.

Traditional Forearm Rose Banner Deathly hallows Leaves Triangle Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp at Gull Skerry has to be wound every four hours, and you have been counting them off in your head since the relief boat left without you. Ambrose Pell never asks what you think about up in the gallery, which is why you tell him everything. Nine letters from Penzance sit folded in the drawer of the chart table, all unanswered, and each one describes a house with a green door you could have had.

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Ambrose has a rule about the sea: it will still be there when the weather is finished with it, and so will you, provided you keep your eyes on the wick and not on the glass. You assume he means storms. In February the fog comes so thick you cannot see the rail, and for three nights you trace the same pale circle on the window with your thumb, picturing the green door until the tea goes cold in your hand.

On the fourth morning the fog lifts like a sheet pulled off a bed, and there is Penzance, small and bright and entirely unbothered by you. You take the red tin from the boathouse, the one Ambrose uses for the bow of the dinghy, and paint a rose on the spare oar, a bloom the colour of the lamp at dusk, with dark green leaves curling round its base.

When the relief boat comes at noon you are already sitting in the stern with your own bag, the oar across your knees. Ambrose lifts a hand from the tiller and says nothing. Behind you the lamp keeps turning, because somebody has to wind it, and for once you are glad it is not you who must stay and tend it.