Pencil drawing of a fleur-de-lis with grey shading and swirling scroll ornaments on its petals, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shaded fleur-de-lis with scrollwork

Black and grey · Flash

A greyscale drawing of a fleur-de-lis with a curled left and right petal, a tall central petal and a banded centre. The three main petals are filled with intricate swirling scrollwork, and the shading gives the form a raised, three-dimensional look. The design is centred on a plain white background.

Fleur-de-lis Scrollwork Filigree Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate-lily of Harrowmere had three petals and a band round its waist, and the smith who cast it was told to leave the band plain. Maud Ashgrove did not leave it plain. She filed it with vines nobody had asked for, so that when the frost came up off the mere and the iron turned grey, the swirls still caught the lamplight like a ledger of small kindnesses owed.

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In autumn the king's stewards rode up from the coast wanting a fourth petal for the new heir, a hooked one to match the eastern towns. Maud told them iron would not hold four without the band splitting. The senior steward, a man with a ring on every finger, said then let it split. She wiped her hands on her apron and said she would not cut a thing that had been whole for sixty years, and sent them back down the hill with nothing but the bill for the coal.

She worked through the winter, filing each curl until the ridges of her thumbs were worn smooth. Some nights her daughter Ella held the lamp while she bent over the band, and the two of them talked about nothing except the weather on the mere. In the last week of thaw she hung the gate on its hinges and swung it open and shut, open and shut, testing the balance. The petals turned inward as they moved, every curl leaning toward its neighbour, so that no single leaf could be lifted from the others.

The stewards came back at Lammas with their ledgers and their new heir. They pushed at the gate and it gave to them, but when they took hold of the central petal to force it wider, they found the band had closed round the others like a hand folded over a hand. The heir laughed. The steward did not. Maud stood at the forge door with her arms folded, and she said nothing at all, because the gate had already said it.