Black and grey dotwork and linework tattoo design of a two-faced woman with flowers, leaves and a pearl necklace, drawn on white paper.

Twin-faced figure with flowers and pearls

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of a figure with two merged faces, each with closed, heavy-lidded eyes, framed by long flowing hair. Sprigs of blossom, buds and leaves rise behind the heads, and a multi-strand pearl necklace hangs across the chest. The linework is crisp and bold, with stippled dotwork shading on the skin, hair and neck, and the composition is a centred half-length figure with one arm crossing the body.

Dotwork Botanical Woman Flower Blossom Leaves Bud Pearl Necklace Long hair Arm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has come sideways through the market since six, and you have given up keeping the pearls dry. Nell works the trestle with a tea towel, wiping each cloth-wrapped tray, while across the aisle the cherry seller tips his blossom into the gutter and swears at the weather in Welsh.

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Grandmother left one necklace, seven strands knotted at the clasp, and a rule pinned to the lid of its box in her square hand: never sell more than one strand at a time. Nell says the rule is nonsense, that a dead woman's rules belong in a drawer. You say it is the only thing she left that didn't end up in a drawer. You have been arguing like this since the funeral, both of you turned towards the same window.

Then the man in the grey anorak wants a single pearl for his wife's birthday, and you reach for the scissors before you have thought it through. The knot gives too easily. Pearls leap off the table and roll under the awning, under the crates, into the runnel where the rain runs fastest. You both drop to your knees in the wet, feeling along the cobbles with cold fingers, while the man waits politely with his umbrella folded under one arm.

You count them out on the stones one at a time, the way she taught you to count stitches. Forty-two, exactly the number she knotted. Nell goes quiet, then sets the last one on your palm, warm from her own hand, and says the rule was never about selling. She lifts the necklace over both your heads so it rests where your two faces meet, and the man walks off in the rain without his pearl.