Black and grey tattoo of a snarling bear head with two snakes, a triangle and a dotwork sun on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bear head with snakes on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A snarling bear head fills the centre of the forearm, flanked at the top by two snakes and a geometric triangle with radiating lines. Fine dotwork shading builds the fur and face texture, while bold outlines define the snake scales and the pointed shape below. A dotted sun sits beneath the bear, and the whole design is rendered in black and grey ink.

Blackwork Dotwork Forearm Bear Snake Triangle Sun Arrow Geometric Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bear came down from the pines in the third week of frost, because the bread smelled better than the snow. Old Matthias Brenner found it at the back door of the bakery at half past four, nose pressed to the crack under the latch, while he was still blowing on the ember in the firebox. He did not shout. His mother had told him that a man who shouts before first light has already lost the argument.

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He set a cut loaf on the flagstone and went back to his dough. When he looked round, the bear had eaten it and was sitting on its haunches, watching him the way the miller watches a sack being weighed. Two grass snakes had come in through the vent with the warm air and coiled along the rafter above the proving shelf, their heads raised as if they too wanted to be told the time.

Every morning after that he baked one loaf more than the village ordered and left it on the step. The snakes grew bolder and kept their place on the rafter. Nobody in Hallow Dene thought it strange, because nobody in Hallow Dene was up at four except the baker and the things that trusted him. The arrangement held until the winter the sun did not come back over the ridge on time, and the bear, hungry and patient, walked up to the oven and waited.

Matthias broke the last loaf in two, gave the bear the larger half, and pointed with his floured hand at the window where a pale line was finally showing. The bear looked where he pointed, then went out into the grey, the snakes unwinding behind it. By the time the village woke the step was bare and the dough was rising, and the sun came up the way he had always been told it would, a little late and with a great deal of noise.