Black line drawing of three lotus flowers with curling Japanese-style waves, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Three lotus flowers with swirling waves

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows three open lotus blooms, one at the top left, one at the centre right and one at the lower left, each with pointed petals and seed pods with dotted tops. Curling wave crests in the Japanese style fill the gaps between the flowers, and long sweeping lines suggest water or stems below. The work is rendered in clean black outline on white with no shading or colour.

Japanese Botanical Lotus Flower Wave Water Petal Seed pod Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mo Ferris had been scrubbing the galley pans since four bells, and Hollis Pike still hadn't said a word about the seed pod on the windowsill. It sat above the range, a grey dried head with holes like a pepper pot. Hollis had bought it from a trader in Canton in March and then forgotten it, but Mo had not. Every morning she dusted it with the rag she used for the copper.

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In the Bay of Bengal the swell came up under the hull like a dog wanting the door opened, and the shelves rattled all night. Hollis, who had three fingers on his left hand and a temper to match, said the pod was rubbish and should go over the side. Mo said nothing. She had shaken a seed loose in the dark and tasted it, sweet and starchy, the way her grandmother used to boil them in sugar for the New Year.

The storm came on the ninth night. Water poured down the companionway, the lamp swung in its gimbals, and the pod leapt off the sill and split open on the wet boards. Seeds scattered everywhere. Mo crawled after them on her knees, gathering them into her apron while the bow dropped into each trough and climbed out again.

At dawn the sea lay flat and grey. Hollis found her sitting in a puddle of seeds. He didn't shout. He picked one up, pressed it between thumb and finger, and said they'd want a tin of earth at the next port. Mo planted the first in a biscuit tin of galley scrap, and by the time they reached Tilbury a green shoot had broken the surface, holding itself up as if it had been waiting.