Black and grey line drawing of a curled fox with teal leaves and swirling vines around it, shown as a tattoo design on white paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Curled fox surrounded by leaves

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

A fox curled up asleep with its tail wrapped around its body, drawn in fine black linework with dense hatching for the fur. Pointed leaves, small sprigs and curling vines surround the fox, with a few leaves shaded in pale teal. The design is centred on a white background with the motif radiating outwards from the fox.

Botanical Fox Leaves Vine Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dilys had been gathering windfalls since six, and by half past seven the grass under the Kingston Blacks was so thick with bruised fruit that the wasps had stopped pretending to be interested in anything else. She was on her knees with the bucket when she saw the fox. It lay in the hollow between the third and fourth rows, curled so tightly it looked like a dropped coil of rope, its tail folded over its nose the way her husband used to fold his coat over his face on the bus.

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Tomas came up the lane at a run, boots slapping, the hen-house latch rattling in his fist. "It's been at the Rhode Island Reds," he said. "Dad says we shoot it or we lose the lot." He was eleven and had already learned to say "lose" like a man selling a field. Dilys looked past him to the feed-shed door, where last spring he had painted pale teal leaves that were now flaking off in the damp, and to the bindweed that had climbed the ladder and wound itself round every rung. "Fetch the torch," she said. "Leave the gun where it is."

They waited until the light went amber and then grey. The fox did not wake. Its breathing lifted the fur along its flank in soft ridges, one after another, like wind moving through barley. A leaf came loose from the nearest bough and settled on its back, and neither of them moved to take it off. Tomas asked if foxes dreamed. Dilys said she supposed they dreamed about hens, and he laughed too loudly, and the fox opened one eye, looked at them without any alarm at all, and closed it again.

In the morning the hollow was empty. The grass still held the shape of a curl, and on top of it lay a single leaf, pale side up, as if someone had set it there for them to find. Tomas picked it up, turned it over twice, and tucked it into the pocket of his coat without saying a word.