Tattoo of an animal skull with green leaves and pale pink roses on the upper arm and shoulder, shown on a woman in a purple top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Animal skull and roses on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A small animal skull with visible fangs sits at the centre of the design, with grey shading inside the eye socket and soft pinkish tones on the bone. Dark green leaves and two pale lavender-white wild roses wrap around the skull, with the flowers rendered in soft shading. The composition curves over the shoulder and upper arm, with the skull and roses set against the natural skin tone.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Morag,

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The fox came out of the hedge at Hollin Gate the same morning the customs men came up from Carlisle, and I've been trying all week to decide which of those things to tell you first. The dog-man at the lay-by swore it was rabies. I said it was only thin, all ribs under the coat, and it lay down in the bramble as if it had been waiting for the lorry to pass.

We buried it under the wild roses by the stile, the pale ones that flower in June when nothing else does. Ruth wanted to take the skull for her shelf, teeth still in, and I told her no, a border is no place to carry bone. She laughed and called me a superstitious old goat. Then the Land Rover came round the bend with its lamps on in daylight and we both forgot the argument.

The men in the van asked what we'd found in the hedge, and I told them: a fox, a skull, and nothing that wanted stopping. They wrote it down. Nobody searches a fox.

I went back on Sunday with a trowel. Two roses had opened overnight, white as paper, and the soil had shifted so the skull showed clean against the root. I left it where it was. Some crossings you make and some you let be.

Your brother, Davy

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