Black and grey ink flash design of a skull resting in a curved shell-like form, framed by wheat sprigs, with the word Virgo and a quotation beneath it.

Skull and wheat sprigs in a shell, Virgo design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A line drawing of a human skull tilted within a curved, shell-like shape, with hatched and stippled shading on the bone and the inner curve. Two sprigs of wheat or grass arc around the skull on either side, with fine stems and ears drawn in ink. The design sits on a plain white background with the word VIRGO in serif capitals and the italic phrase 'a cacophony of awe and joy and terror.' below it.

Botanical Skull Shell Wheat Sprig Zodiac Quote Hatching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The skull turned up in the ploughed field behind Dunsby Farm the week before the wedding, lodged in the curve of an old oyster shell as if somebody had set it down to rest. Uncle Ray wanted it reburied. Aunt Maud wanted it on the top table. I wanted nothing to do with it, which is why I was the one holding it at seven in the morning, with wheat sheaves stacked against the barn wall behind me and the bride's car still ten miles off.

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Harvest weddings are loud. Dennis had rung the bells at St Botolph's since he was nine, and that morning he rang every bell in the tower at once, badly, because the bride had asked for joy and he had decided joy sounded like that. Somebody dropped a tray of glasses in the marquee. The vicar laughed too high. Under all of it the skull grinned up from my palms, jaw open as if it had a question and no patience for the answer.

Maud always said the dead liked a fuss made over them, so I gave it one. I wrapped the shell in a tea towel, tucked a sprig of wheat behind the skull's ear, and carried it up the aisle during the first hymn, where it sat on the altar rail beside the lilies. Half the congregation gasped. The other half sang louder. The bride, who had grown up with that field and knew what the ground gave back, wept through the vows and never once looked away from it.

Afterwards the shell went back into the furrow with a jam jar of cider and a note nobody read. The bells kept ringing until dusk. Now, when the kettle screams, I think of that morning: everything at once, none of it quite a tune, and somehow exactly right for a harvest.