Colour tattoo of sunflowers, Celtic knots, a seated fairy and a butterfly across a person's upper back, in a neo-traditional style with black outlines.

Sunflowers, Celtic knots and a fairy on a back

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows two sunflowers with pale Celtic knotwork centres, a seated fairy with red and orange wings, a butterfly at the top and green leaves down the right side. Bold black outlines define the petals, leaves and figures, with soft shading in yellow, orange, red, green and light blue. The design runs vertically down the middle and right of the back, and the photograph is taken from behind so no face is visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Nell,

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The sunflower seeds came through the Bay of Biscay in a tin that smelled of tar, and only four were lost to the damp. Captain Pryor says they will not take in this latitude, but I have planted them anyway in a box lashed beside the galley door, where the cook tips his potato peelings and the light comes slanting through the rigging at dawn. Mr Abel Quick, the carpenter, has carved a knot into the lid, the three-loop Celtic kind his grandmother used on her church pews in Penzance, and he swears it will keep the seeds from rolling overboard.

Something has been fluttering about the mainmast since Madeira. A swallowtail, Mr Quick says, though I think it is a moth. Last Tuesday it landed on the tiller and would not be shifted, so the second mate let it ride, and we steered very carefully for the rest of the watch. I have been thinking of it as your fairy, the one you wanted painted on the nursery wall before Father stopped the paint money. She sits in the crook of the bowsprit at night and watches the lamps.

The first bud came up yesterday, a green fist no bigger than a thimble, and the whole crew crowded round it like a christening. Even Pryor took off his hat. I have not told anyone that I bribed the cook to save me the yolk of every egg so the box would have something to eat. We are four hundred miles from land, and I am ashamed how happy it makes me.

Write when you can, though I know the post is slow and the ships are slower. Tell me whether the old rose still climbs the west wall, and whether anyone remembered to water the cutting. I will bring you a flower if the wind is kind and the bloom holds, and I will keep one petal pressed in my Bible for you.

Your loving sister, Clemency

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