Black and grey realism tattoo of a centaur archer drawing a bow, shaded and placed on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Centaur archer on the side of the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A centaur archer is drawn in a rearing pose, with long flowing hair, a drawn bow and an arrow aimed upward. The figure is rendered with soft shading and fine stippled texture, with clouds and small rocks shaded behind and below it. The piece is entirely in black and grey ink and fills most of the frame on a torso with the bottom edge of trousers visible.

Realism Ribs Bow Arrow Horse Cloud Rock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the water has been low since Michaelmas and Father says the cut will close at Wharf Lock if it does not rain before the new moon. I walked the towpath to Hatch Bridge yesterday to fetch the post, and that is where I saw him, up on the ridge above the willows, the one Mrs Pell calls the Archer.

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He is a chestnut horse from the withers down and a man from there up, bare to the waist, with hair blown out behind him like smoke off a coal fire. He had his bow drawn to his ear and he was rearing, forelegs pawing at the cloud as if it owed him money. I stood on the bridge with the bag over my shoulder and waited for him to loose. He did. The arrow went straight up into the grey, and for a long moment nothing happened. Then the sky split a little along the line the arrow had taken, and the first rain came down on the stones the colour of old pennies.

The next morning the arrow was lying in the lock channel, shaft fletched with what I swear were heron feathers. Father would not touch it. He says the Archer is owed a horse for every drought, and the company has been short of horses since the spring. I put it under my bunk and I will not pretend I like having it there.

Last night the clouds came back low over the ridge, and I heard hooves slow on the cabin roof, one at a time, like someone walking to the gallows. This morning the arrow was gone and in its place was a single chestnut hair on my pillow, long enough to tie a boat to. Come home at Christmas if you can. I have not told Father about the hair.