Two hands with black and grey traditional style tattoos, a large skull on the back of the left hand and a rose on the back of the right hand, with small finger tattoos including a cross, a letter P

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and rose tattoos on the hands

Traditional · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are shown from the back, with a large skull on the left hand and a rose with stem and leaves on the right. Smaller designs sit on the fingers and edges of the hands, including a cross, a letter P, a tiny skull, a crown and a diamond. The tattoos use solid black outlines with grey shading and are photographed against a dark textured background.

Traditional Hand Skull Rose Stem Leaves Cross Crown Diamond Finger tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the wind off the moor gets into old stones and comes out the other side with a grievance. Up on the ridge stood Harrowgate Keep, roofless since the siege, and its last steward was a woman called Maud Penrose who kept a silver crown in her apron pocket and swore it was all that remained of the king's promise.

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Every autumn the widow of the lord sent a rose cutting up the hill, wrapped in wet linen, and every spring Maud planted it between the broken arches. Nothing else grew there but nettles, yet the roses took. She said the cross was for the chapel bell that was melted down, the P for the Penrose name the bishop struck from the rolls, and the little skull for the cook who laughed at the wrong moment and was never seen again.

The year the diamond went missing from the widow's ring, the sheriff's men came up the path with lanterns and a warrant soaked through with rain. Maud met them at the gate with her palms held open. She showed them a skull inked on one hand and a rose on the other, and asked which of them would dare call a mark on a palm a thief's sign.

They left at dawn without a word. Some say the diamond was never stolen at all, only dropped down a well where the rose roots drink. Others say the rose is still climbing the wall, and that if you wait by the gate on a still night you will hear Maud counting her coins into the dark. I have never gone to check. Pass me that cup, and mind the ash.