Black and grey realism tattoo of a wolf standing among bare birch trees on the inner forearm, with small birds at the top.

Black wolf among bare trees on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black wolf with pale eyes stands centrally, framed by slender bare trees that rise from the base of the forearm. Small birds perch in the branches above its head, and a tiny animal silhouette sits near the lower edge. The shading is soft and smooth in dark greys and black, with the trees left as light negative space against the darker wolf.

Realism Forearm Wolf Tree Bird Forest Animal Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the lift in Corrin Tower has been broken since March, so you take the stairs, nine floors of concrete smelling of wet coats and somebody's fried onions. On the fourth landing the window looks onto the scrap of woodland the council never cleared, a stand of silver birch growing out of the old car park.

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Mrs Adeyemi on the sixth floor says the wolf came out of those trees the winter the power station closed. She says it doesn't hunt people, only the lost dogs and the kids who stay out past the streetlights. You laugh at her, then notice pale prints in the frost on the bins below, walking straight across the car park towards your block.

That night you go down with a torch, your phone dead, your pockets full of the sausage rolls she pressed on you. Birds lift from the branches as you pass, a dozen of them, black as burnt paper. The birches stand bone white in the torchlight. Something watches you from between the trunks, and its eyes catch the beam and hold it, pale as moons. You stand still the way your dad taught you, and wait for it to decide.

It doesn't come closer. It turns and walks back into the trees, slow and unhurried, and at the edge of the wood a small fox trots out to follow, looking back once. Upstairs the lift doors open on the ground floor with a sigh. You press the button for nine, and for the first time since March, it answers.