Three black and grey dotwork tattoos: a skull with peonies and a fern on the thigh, a moth over a split skull on the upper arm, and a skull with leaves on the upper arm.

Skulls with peonies, fern and moth tattoos

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The collage shows three tattoos. The largest, on the thigh, combines a cracked skull with peonies and a fern frond, drawn in fine outline with stippled shading. The two smaller tattoos on the upper arm show a moth beside a split skull and a skull topped with leaves, both built from dense dot shading and bold outlines. All three are in black ink and grey tones.

Dotwork Botanical Thigh Upper arm Skull Peony Fern Moth Leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ilse,

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The moth came out of the cracked skull this morning, as you said it would, though not in the way I expected. Tamsin had the glasshouse door propped open with a bucket of wet peat, and the peonies we coaxed from the seed vault in spring had finally opened, heavy and pale as old linen. I cut the first bloom for the reliquary table and found a moth asleep in its centre, grey wings folded like a letter nobody has read.

Things here are simpler than they were in Harrow. The water tower still ticks at night, and the fern along the north wall has grown so fast it has tried to climb into the ventilation shafts. Mr Okafor says we should cut it back, but I told him the ferns were here before the wall, and that they know more about the old roofs than either of us.

Anyway. The skull on the shelf is the one from the collapsed chapel on the ridge. Tamsin wants to bury it, I want to keep it, and we have agreed to leave it on the sill until the frost makes the decision for us. When I look at its split crown I think of the moths that lived in the rafters before the fire, and I wonder whether they ever knew what they were living inside.

Write back when the post runs. Tell me if the river has gone down far enough for the boats, and whether you still keep the blue cup. I have started to think the cracks in that skull are just where the ferns get in, which would make them the sensible ones.

Yours in the greenhouse, Maren