Black and grey botanical rose with shaded leaves tattooed on a forearm, with black denim shorts and a white top visible.

Rose and leaves on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large rose in full bloom, with several shaded leaves and a curling stem, covers the outer forearm and reaches toward the elbow. The linework is fine and the petals are built up with soft grey shading and fine hatching, giving the flower depth. The ink is almost entirely black and grey with only faint warm tones in the petals, and the tattoo fills the right side of the frame against a blurred street background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fiddler had hung the paper rose above the bar and promised it to whoever danced until the church bell struck one. By the third hour the hall had emptied to two dancers. Sarah Whitlow had come in off the fen with mud drying on her hem, and she moved as though the boards owed her money. Her partner was Edwin Gale, the miller's son, who had already lost his boots on a wager and was now losing his breath.

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The rose had been cut from good paper by old Mother Ransome, who shaded every petal with grey ink until it looked like frost on a window. Folk said that when a tune quickened, the petals loosened a little, and when it slowed they closed again. Nobody in the hall had seen it happen, but nobody had looked away from it either, and the fiddler played faster than any tune he knew.

At the stroke of one Sarah stopped, her hand still in Edwin's, and the room waited for her to claim the prize. Instead she asked the fiddler for something slow. He played it, and the rose on its nail opened fully for the first time in forty years, its leaves curling toward the lamp. Sarah took it down, pressed it flat between two hymn books, and gave it to Edwin, who had not asked for it.

Next morning the nail above the bar was bare, and the fiddler's case held only a single grey petal, dry as a moth's wing.

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