Black fine line tattoo of a patterned teacup with dotted steam, a heart tea bag tag and the word M.O.M beneath, on a person's leg.

Teacup with tea bag and M.O.M lettering

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A teacup with a floral pattern and leafy vine detail sits at the centre, with a dotted steam trail rising above and a tea bag with a small heart tag hanging over the rim. The word M.O.M is set in simple capitals beneath the cup. The linework is thin and black, with dotwork shading in the steam and cup, and the design sits centrally against plain skin with a patterned fabric visible at the edge.

Fine line Dotwork Other Teacup Steam Heart Flower Leaves Lettering Mom

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has sealed the lane since Tuesday, and the Crooked Heron has no guests but you, a surveyor stranded on the wrong side of the pass, and Mrs Ansell, who has kept this inn for forty winters and will not be told how to make tea. She sets a cracked blue pot down on the settle between you and tuts at the paper bag you have dropped into your cup. "Loose leaf or nothing," she says. You let her win. The stove ticks, the window is white, and she is the only warm thing for ten miles.

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The cup she gives you is old Staffordshire, its vine climbing from the foot to the lip, a blue flower opening on the side where the glaze has worn thin. She tells you her mother drank from it every evening and wrote the family's initials on the sugar tin so nobody would steal the last spoonful. Then she fishes a tea bag from her apron pocket, its paper soft as cloth, and hangs it over the rim of your cup by its string. The little tag bears a heart drawn in biro. "For the plough driver, when he comes," she says. "He takes his with the heart facing up. Don't ask me why."

By midnight the wind has dropped and the snow has stopped its hissing against the glass. You sit with the cup going cold in your hands and the steam still threading up towards the beams, thin and grey, the way it always does in the lamplight. Mrs Ansell hums something tuneless by the hearth. You realise she has not once looked at the window since you arrived.

At first light the plough's orange lamp swings across the ceiling. You find the cup already rinsed and upturned on the drainer, the tea bag laid beside it on a saucer, its heart turned carefully towards the door.