Two painted traditional flash designs of daggers on cream paper, one with a red rose at the guard and one with a scaled hilt, an eye and a ribbon banner.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two traditional dagger designs on cream paper

Traditional · Colour · Flash

Two dagger designs sit side by side on textured cream paper. The left dagger has a stacked ornamental hilt with a turquoise gem, and a red rose with green leaves at the crossguard. The right dagger has a scaled hilt topped by an eye with red rays, a jewel accent, and a red ribbon banner wrapped around the blade. Both are painted in bold, solid colour with dark outlines and heavy shading.

Traditional Dagger Rose Eye Diamond Banner Scale Gem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ida Crossley came down the stairs of the Wicker workshop at half past five with her sister's letter crushed in one fist and grinding dust still in her hair. Samuel Hebden had already lit the forge, and he did not look up. "Two daggers," he said. "You want them both done by Friday, and one of them has to shame the other man."

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She laid her sketches on his bench. One dagger wore a rose at its crossguard, red petals pressed tight around the steel, leaves as green as pond weed. The other had a scaled hilt like a fish fresh from the Don, and above it an eye that watched without blinking, a red ribbon knotted around the blade with a message she had not yet written. Samuel tapped the eye with a blackened thumb. "That one's for the man who sends letters. The rose is for the woman who reads them."

Ida worked six nights by gaslight, polishing the turquoise stone in the first hilt until it held the forge glow like a shallow sea. She did not sleep much. Each evening the letter lay open beside the bench, and each morning she folded it away again, unsure which blade had been meant for whom.

On the Friday she wrapped the rose dagger in oiled cloth and left the eye one lying on Samuel's bench. "You're keeping that?" he asked. She shook her head, took a pen from her apron, and across the red ribbon wrote her sister's name, and beneath it the words Come home. Then she tucked the parcel under her arm and walked to the Leeds train before the whistle.