Traditional style flower tattoo with blue petals, a black centre ringed in orange and green leaves with red tips, on the upper arm, with a partial yellow big cat head above it.

Traditional flower on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A symmetrical flower sits at the centre of the image, with layered blue and pale petals, a black centre with an orange ring, and orange starburst details between the petals. Green leaves with red tips surround it, and a soft red wash sits behind the leaves. A partial yellow and black big cat head appears at the top left, and the photo is taken against a dark top and white paper towel.

Traditional Botanical Upper arm Flower Mandala Leaves Big cat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit closer, because the wind off the Wash carries sound, and I've told this one to nobody but the ticket girl. The flower that Mabel Ruddock painted on the caravan door in nineteen thirty-one was no ordinary bloom. Blue as a kingfisher's back at the rim, paler toward the heart, with that black eye in the middle ringed in gold like a sovereign somebody had sat on. The fair was camped at Hunstanton that summer, and every child who ran past the door swore the petals turned when the sun went behind the Ferris wheel.

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Mabel's husband, Ern, ran the big cat cage, a lioness with one ear torn and a yellow mane gone thin with age. He used to say the lioness could smell the paint and dreamed of gardens. One August evening the cage door swung loose in a squall, and the whole midway went quiet. Mabel didn't scream. She walked down the boards with a bucket of red wash and a stick of chalk, drew a ring of leaves on the sawdust, and sat down inside it with her knitting. The lioness came, sniffed the leaves with their red tips, and lay down beside her like a cat on a hearth.

Ern never understood it, and Mabel never explained. She only said the leaves had kept the old cat company, and that a flower is a fine thing to hide behind when you're frightened. The door still hangs in the back of the tea tent. If you look at the centre long enough, the gold ring starts to glow, and then you'll know it's time to go home.