Traditional flash sheet with rose, fox and hourglass

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A flash sheet of four traditional-style tattoo designs and a central banner reading BRAND NEW. The designs include chess pieces set in a rose, a sunset over waves framed by rope, an hourglass with a hooded skull and an autumn leaf, and a fox with pine trees and a daisy. The bold black outlines, flat fills and bright palette of red, yellow, green and orange give the sheet a classic look.

Traditional Rose Sunset Wave Hourglass Skull Leaf Fox Pine tree Daisy Flower Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The knight had lost an ear to the frost, so Maud kept it in her coat pocket and checked it with her thumb whenever she was losing. Today she was losing badly. Her queen had gone over the wall on the third move, and the sun was dropping into the sea beyond the broken gatehouse, turning the water the colour of a wet penny. You had the white pieces, which meant you had the first move and, Maud insisted, the first mistake.

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Between turns the hourglass on the parapet ran out its half hour. A thin gold thread of sand fell while an oak leaf that had blown in through the arrow slit lay across the board like a dropped glove. A fox had been coming into the courtyard all week, sitting in the daisies by the well and watching the two of you with amber eyes, as if it had money on the outcome. Every time the sand stopped, Maud tapped the glass and said the same thing: the old keep had measured time by tides, not sand, and nobody here had ever trusted a clock.

You slid your knight to the edge of the board and waited. Maud studied it for a long time. Then she took the missing ear from her pocket, set it beside the horse's broken neck, and said, "Your move." It was clearly hers.

The fox rose, shook the frost from its ruff and trotted through the gap where the portcullis used to be. Below, the tide turned. Maud swept her last rook off the board, laid the hourglass on its side so the sand stopped, and let the sun finish going down without either of you.