Colour tattoo of a red rose in a blue stained glass dome with a gold banner reading Tale as old as time, on the outer thigh.

Stained glass rose with banner on thigh

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A red rose with green stems and leaves sits in a stained glass style panel framed by an ornate grey and gold crest and a gold banner. Bold black outlines define the leaded glass segments, which are shaded in blues and greys, and fallen pink petals are scattered across the lower panel. The design fills the upper thigh and is shown straight on against a bright pink background.

Thigh Rose Petal Banner Frame Crest Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The glasshouse on Tessen Ring has eleven panes left, and I count them every shift the way my mother counted rosary beads, because counting keeps the hands busy while the mind goes elsewhere. The rose sits in the middle of the old hydroponic bay under a bell of leaded glass that the first settlers salvaged from a cathedral in the Ouse valley before the crossing. Nobody on the ring remembers what the rose was for. We only know it must not be moved, and that its fallen petals must be gathered before they reach the grille, where the recyclers would take them.

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Tonight there are three on the grate. I kneel and pick them up with the tweezers Auntie Rhian gave me, the brass ones with the chipped handle, and lay them on a square of wet linen the way she taught me. Their colour is the deep pink of a bruise going yellow at the edges. Past the bell, the blue hull-light paints every broken seam a shade colder than it should be.

Rhian used to say the rose was a promise made by someone who had never had to keep one. I used to think she was bitter. Now, with the linen cold under my palm, I think she was describing the glass, not the flower: beautiful, held together by lead, and only ever one crack away from the dark.

On the last shift before the seal goes, I found a bud I had never seen, closed tight and green as a bottle, pushing up through the soil beside the stem. I did not tell the council. I took the cutting cloth from its hook and left the bell door open a finger's width, so the fans could breathe on it. Let the old thing go to seed, I thought, and let someone else fight the grille.