Line drawing flash design of a dotwork-shaded snake coiled around two pink roses, with planetary symbols and the Latin phrase Omnia Vnvs Est beneath.

Snake with roses and planetary symbols

Dotwork · Mixed · Flash

A snake with a stippled dotwork head forms an infinity-like loop, with its crosshatched body crossing over itself. Two pink roses with green leaves sit at either side, and a crescent moon and two planetary symbols appear on the coils, with the Latin phrase Omnia Vnvs Est lettered below. The design is drawn in black linework and dots on a pale background, with only the roses and leaves in colour.

Dotwork Botanical Snake Rose Leaves Crescent moon Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last cheque bounced in Doncaster, so Mr Aske sold the lions to a park in Lincolnshire and kept the snake, because a snake eats once a month and never asks for a wage. Mab had top billing for nineteen years. Every night she went round the sawdust ring in her great loop, head drawn over the crest of her own body, and every night a man in the cheap seats would say it looked like a sum that never came out.

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We struck the big top in October with the wet canvas steaming. The poles were painted with the planet signs Aske had copied from an almanac in a charity shop, and across the front flap he had lettered Omnia Vnvs Est in gold that was already flaking. He told the crowds it meant all is one. Nobody in the north read Latin and he never corrected them, and I never asked, because by then I was the only one left who knew which bulb in the ticket booth still worked.

In the empty winter field I kept Mab in the old horse box with a heater that ran on paraffin. She would not perform any more. She would only lie in her coil with her head tucked into the middle, where the warmth gathered, and when I put my hand near her she did not strike. I used to think the loop was vanity, something for the lights. Sitting there, I saw it was just how she kept herself from going cold.

Aske sold the poles for scrap in March. I cut the moon from the back of the banner, where the gold had worn to thread, and sewed it onto the lining of my coat. When the frost comes I curl up in that coat the way Mab did, nose to tail, and I stay warm longer than I have any right to.