Black and grey tattoo of a skeletal chameleon curling around a branch with leaves and a dotted spiral, on the forearm, in an engraving style.

Skeletal chameleon with leaves on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A chameleon skeleton with a frilled head and a fan-like crest sits on a branch with leaves, and its tail curls into a spiral of dots and a vine border. The linework is fine and even, with hatched and stippled shading on the bones, leaves and bark. The design is rendered only in black and grey ink and fills a rounded area of the forearm against a plain background.

Dotwork Botanical Forearm Skeleton Leaves Branch Spiral Dot Vine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, the cake can wait five minutes, the bride's aunt has already had her slice twice. I'm going to tell you about Ada Fenwick's chameleon, the one that could be any colour it liked, which was its trouble. Nobody in Thornwick could find it. Her father would call up the stairs and she'd answer from the wallpaper.

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The summer she turned nine, the lemon tree by the church wall went grey and bare, and the chameleon sat on the lowest branch and refused to change at all. It had decided, you see, that there was nothing left in the village worth matching. So it stayed the colour of old bone, and the leaves came out around it anyway, one by one, as if they'd been waiting to be asked. Ada brought it crickets in a jam jar and told it about the weather and who had died and who had married badly.

Then the frost came in October and the chameleon went still. Ada didn't cry. She wound it round her finger and carried it to the vicar, who said a creature that small could go under the roots and that was the end of the matter. But when the ground thawed in spring, the branch had grown straight through the ribs, and the tail had curled itself into a spiral, dotted with seeds the tree had dropped there, as neat as a row of buttons.

So that's why you'll see Ada's grandchildren at the lych gate with their sleeves rolled up, showing anyone who asks the little spiral on the inside of their arm. Now, somebody find me a fork, and I'll tell you what became of the jam jar.