Black fine line tree with small stars tattooed on the top of an ankle, with bare toes and painted toenails visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree and stars on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A single black tree with a thin trunk and branching crown sits on the ankle, with a few small star shapes above it and a short root line at its base. The linework is fine and even, and the ink is solid black with no colour. The photograph is taken close up from the side, with the foot resting on a patterned rug.

Fine line Botanical Ankle Tree Star Branches Root

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan, the rain has not stopped since Tuesday and the tarpaulin over my stall sags like a wet sail above the apples. Mr Fennimore came back for the hill-road seeds, paying in coppers still warm from his pocket. He asked whether they would grow in a yard with no sun, only the light from the lamp on the corner. I told him the old trees don't mind the dark much. They only mind being moved before their roots have decided where they belong.

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He bought six packets, then asked for a cutting from the mother plant I keep in a jam jar under the counter. I wrapped it in the page of tide times, the only dry paper left. He said his daughter draws the crown of that tree on everything she owns, her satchel, the cover of her atlas, the wardrobe door, and that she insists on a cluster of stars above it so the tree can find its way home at night. I said that was sensible. Trees have to navigate too.

By six the market had emptied and the lamp on the corner was humming the way it does before it gives up. I went to pack the seed tin and found a seventh seed rolling about the bottom, black and papery, which I had certainly not put there. I know you will say I dreamt it. Still, I pressed it into the window box beside the basil and told it, plainly, where the sun would be in the morning.

This morning there was one shoot, a thin dark stem no taller than a matchstick, with two small leaves spread out like a handful of stars that had lost their place. Mr Fennimore will want to see it. I think I will let him come to it slowly, the way you taught me to let weather come in. Your loving, Ada.