Black fine line tattoos on a person's upper back, including a botanical sprig with cones above a hanging stick, an outlined stag bust with an arrow, and a compass design.

Botanical sprig and stag bust on a upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows the upper back and shoulder of a person with grey hair, with several black tattoos. The central piece is a botanical sprig of foliage and cones that hangs from a thin line to a small log set among dotted stars. Below it, an outlined stag's head pierced by an arrow sits beside a compass-like design at the top left, with further lines and lettering on the shoulder.

Fine line Botanical Dotwork Back Shoulder Sprig Foliage Stag Deer Arrow Log Star Compass Mountain Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every morning before the bells, Anna Vogel lit the oven in the bakery at the foot of Greywater pass, and every morning the stag was waiting at the yard gate, its breath smoking over the frost. Her grandmother had warned her not to feed it. A stag that eats from your hand, the old woman said, will one day expect your hand to be on the bow. Anna fed it anyway, a heel of rye each dawn.

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In return the stag left a sprig of cedar on the step, its cones still green and tight. Anna hung them above the proving trough to keep the damp out of the dough. One hard winter the valley ran short of wood, and the baker's boy came up the lane dragging a log he had found in the snow. It was split clean, and frost lay on its bark in small bright stars, as if something had struck it with light and left the mark behind. Anna set it in the firebox, and the bread that morning came out sweeter than anything she had baked.

A hunter called at the bakery the next dawn, his bow strung and his boots still wet from the pass. He asked for the stag. Anna cut him a loaf and said nothing. He ate it on the step, looked up at the cedar hanging over the trough, and then walked off down the valley with his bow unstrung over his shoulder, saying he had been following the wrong ridge for a week.

The stag came to the gate the following morning, and the morning after that. Anna never found the arrow the hunter had carried, though she looked for it in the snow for a long time.