Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black wolf head design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised wolf head in profile, with its mouth open and teeth visible, facing right. The mane is filled with a repeating pattern of overlapping scale shapes, and the image uses solid black fills with no shading or grey tones. It is shown on a plain white background with the design centred and no body part visible.

Blackwork Wolf Wolf head Mane Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the snow shut the pass on Tuesday, and the carter from Harrow Bend has not come up since. I have been counting the lamps each night from the window of the toll-house, and there is still one short of the usual forty on the eastern posts. I hope you are keeping warm in the valley and not buying any more of that cheap wine from the Ostler brothers.

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The wolf came on the third night. It was black as wet slate, and its mane lay in overlapping scales like the tiles on the chapel roof, each one edged sharp against the snow. Its mouth stood open on rows of teeth. I took up the lamp expecting the end of me, but it did not come forward. It stood in the gap between the gateposts and looked past me down the road, as though it were the one keeping watch and I were the thing that had wandered in.

Two riders came out of the fog the next morning with a lantern and a sack that wriggled. The wolf rose at once. It did not run at them. It only lowered its head, and they turned their horses so fast that one of them lost his hat over the edge of the cutting. The sack was left lying in the road. When I finally went out to it, there were five pups inside, too cold to cry.

I have not told the magistrate about any of it. The wolf sleeps across the threshold now, and when I bring out the bread it takes the crust from my fingers as politely as a steward. The pups are in the stove-room in a basket lined with my winter shawl. Come up when the thaw comes, and bring the good knife and the ledger, because I have decided the pass is ours to keep. Your loving sister, Ilse.