Colour traditional tattoo of a sunflower with a stem, leaves and a banner reading SPARK, on the upper arm near the elbow.

Sunflower and SPARK banner on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A yellow and orange sunflower with black outlines sits at the top of a green stem with several leaves, and a cream banner reading SPARK wraps around the stem. The linework is bold and solid, with simple flat shading and a red tip at the base of the stem. The tattoo is shown on the upper arm near the bent elbow, against a plain blue top and a softly lit wall with framed artwork behind.

Traditional Botanical Upper arm Sunflower Flower Leaves Stem Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on Harrow Reach remembered the sun well, only what their grandmothers had said about it, so when the last sunflower came up through the cracked deck of the seed hall, Maren Tolley carried it out to the eastern rail before the frost could find it.

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It was a small thing, a hand's width of stem with one leaf unfurled, and it had no business being alive. The hall's lamps had gone out in her mother's time. The sunflowers that once lined the terraces had gone to black seed and then to nothing. Everyone said the flower was a rumour, the way the sea was a rumour, and yet there it was, bent toward the grey smear where the light used to rise.

The elders argued all that winter about whether it was a sign or a mistake. Old Tobiah said a flower that turns its face to a sun that isn't there is only a fool with good manners. Maren did not argue. She built a frame of salvaged wire, wrapped the roots in cloth, and carried the plant to the reactor vent each morning, where the warm air kept the frost off its yellow head.

By spring the bloom opened, bright as a struck match. Tobiah came up the stairs with his coat still buttoned and stood a long time looking at it. Then he went down and fetched the lamp oil, and that was how the reactor vent came to be lit again, one small flame at a time, all the way to the sea.