Fine line black tattoo of a curled, sleeping animal with closed eyes on the ankle.

Curled sleeping animal on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A single continuous black outline forms a curled shape resembling a sleeping animal, with small strokes suggesting closed eyes at the centre. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design is shown in black ink on pale skin. The tattoo sits on the side of the ankle and is shown in a close, straight-on view against a plain background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the cage bell rang for the back shift, you had already claimed the lamp-room step, turning three times on the cold stone before folding yourself into a ring. Nose tucked under your tail, eyes shut against the coal dust, you took the men's comings and goings as a kind of weather. Old Sam Ridley swore you could hear his boots from the top of the lane. Maybe you could.

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The winter the pit went quiet, nobody came for the lamps anymore. The brass tags hung on their hooks like unanswered questions, and the wind came through the broken glass of the lamp-room window. You kept to the step anyway. The baker's girl brought you crusts, and Mrs Ridley, who had buried a husband and two brothers beneath the same winding gear, would lift her shawl and sit beside you with her knitting, not speaking, just keeping the dusk company.

On the last evening, the bell did not ring. You lifted your head at the hour it always rang, ears forward, and waited. Then you heard it: not the bell but the scrape of a single pair of boots on the lane, slow and tired, climbing up from the village with a tin of tea under one arm. Mrs Ridley had not been up that lane in a year.

She sat down on the step. You curled again, tighter than before, and let her hand rest on your back until the kettle in the cottage stopped singing and the lamps along the row went out one by one. Below, the wheel had stopped turning for good, and for the first time in years you slept all the way through the night.

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