Black and grey realism rose with leaves above a line of Roman numerals running diagonally down the inside of a forearm.

Rose and Roman numerals on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded rose with petals and leaves sits at the top of the forearm, and a diagonal line of Roman numerals reads VII. VI. XIII down the arm beside it. The rose uses fine shading and soft grey tones, while the numerals are bold, serifed outlines with dark shading on one side. The composition is black and grey, with the tattoo filling most of the frame against a plain light skin tone.

Realism Botanical Lettering Forearm Rose Leaves Roman numeral Numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Penhallow had been at the bench since breakfast when the tin box came in from the cottage at the edge of Hollin Wood. The lid was dented at one corner, and a rose had been pressed into the metal, its petals crowded and thorny under a skin of dust. Mrs Corran, who had carried it down the lane in a shopping basket, said her father had kept it beneath the floorboards for forty years and never once opened it. The only words he had left her were the numerals stamped on the hasp.

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VII. VI. XIII. Ada turned them over with her thumb, the serifs sharp enough to catch the lamp. She tried them as a date, then as a bell count for the church across the green, then as the hour the sawmill stopped in the great frost. Nothing fitted. Outside, the wind worked through the larches and the church clock gave its slow, tired miss before striking the quarter, and she felt the old habit of patience settle over her shoulders like a coat.

On the third evening she found the scratch inside the rim of the lid, almost too faint to read under the loupe: a short line in a looser hand. Seven before six, and the thirteenth keeps what the rose hides. She turned the seventh dial back, the sixth forward, and let the thirteenth fall where the words led. The lock gave with a small sound, like someone letting out a long-held breath.

Inside there was no gold, only a bundle of letters tied in blue ribbon and a pressed rose gone the colour of weak tea. The top envelope was addressed to a woman named Ruth, in the same square hand as the repair tickets pinned above the bench. Ada closed the lid, set the box back on the sill for Mrs Corran to collect, and went out to wind the church clock by hand, because it seemed only right that someone should.