Black and grey Japanese style dragon tattoo coiling from the upper back down the side and onto the ribs of a bare torso.

Black and grey dragon coiling down back and side

Japanese · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large dragon with a detailed head, whiskers and clawed feet coils from the upper back down the side of the torso, ending near the hip. The linework is bold with soft grey shading, and the scales, mane and body are built up in tonal layers against a plain black background. The image uses only black and grey ink, with an arm crossing the chest and the figure cropped so no face is visible.

Japanese Back Ribs Dragon Claw Whiskers Scale Coil Torso

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer the range and mind the dog, because this is the part where the wind starts up. My grandfather farmed the Coldharbour land the winter the beck froze to the bottom, and the ewes would not go past the gate by the old ash. They stood bunched in the snow and stared at the hedge, and nobody could say why.

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So he walked up one dark morning with a lantern and a bucket of barley, and found the hedge bent under the weight of something long. It was a dragon, grey as slate, coiled three times round the ash trunk. Its scales were ridged like frost on a gate bar, and its whiskers hung past its jaw, stiff with rime. When it lifted its head, the mane rose behind it like smoke off a chimney. Its claws were hooked into the bark, each one as long as a scythe tine.

He did not run, which is the only thing about him I have ever been proud of. He set the barley down and wished it good morning, the way you would to a neighbour's bull. The dragon looked at him a long while. Then it said, in a voice like a door dragged over flags, that the ewes were safe enough, but the beck would not thaw until someone owned up to the ram he had sold in October without telling the river.

Grandfather had sold that ram to a man from Penrith and kept the money in a tin under the stairs. He fetched the tin the next day and poured the coins into the beck with his own two hands. The ice cracked that same night like a rifle shot. And every hard winter after, he left a bucket by the ash, and in the morning it was always heavy with river stones. So when you hear the ash creak in the night, don't go out with a lantern. Leave the barley, and if you find the bucket full of stones, say good morning all the same.