Traditional style colour tattoo on an upper arm showing an eye within a dark diamond, flanked by red flowers and green leaves, with a Vini Vidi Vici banner above.

Traditional eye and flowers on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A dark diamond shape holds a blue-irised eye with sunburst rays, set between two red flowers with white centres and green leaves. Above, a yellow rose sits beneath a banner reading VINI VIDI VICI, with a dark figure partly visible at the top edge. Bold black outlines, solid fills and a mix of red, yellow, green and blue ink give a classic flash-style finish.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tobias, the eye came down from the observatory on Tuesday in a crate stamped with the Crown's seal, and the harbourmaster's men carried it up the hill like a sleeping saint. Father has hung it over the north gate, where the red flowers of the Vesper Gardens can see it from the road. Mother says it's vulgar. Mother also wept when she saw the yellow rose the sculptors painted beneath the words, so I have decided her opinion is unreliable this week.

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The words are the king's own, cut into the banner in gold leaf: VINI VIDI VICI. Old Pemberton says the king had them carved after the Battle of Saltmarsh, though the Saltmarsh men say he only ever got as far as the inn. Nobody argues with Pemberton. He is ninety and has one good eye, which he claims is the eye in the diamond, lent to the kingdom for safekeeping.

Last night the lamp caught the iris and I swear it blinked. I stood under the gate with a candle and counted the sunburst rays until my hands stopped shaking. Thirty-one, thirty-two. Then a boy from the pottery quarter threw a stone at it, the rays rang like a struck bell, and the whole street came out in nightshirts to see what had happened.

Come home before the spring fair. Bring the good black ink from Marrow Street, and tell Ma I am not dying of anything but curiosity. Your sister, Isolde.

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