Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a curled, sleeping fox with closed eyes and pointed ears on the ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Curled sleeping fox on an ankle

Dotwork · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a fox curled up asleep, with its pointed ears and closed eyes drawn in a bold black outline. The body is filled with fine stippled dots that give soft shading, and short dashes trail behind the tail. The design is in black ink and greys, centred against plain skin with a dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hesketh's barge, the Marigold, came down to Shadwick Lock in the last week of January with ice in the cut like broken crockery. Abel was sent ahead along the towpath to keep the stove lit, because his mother's hands had gone stiff on the tiller and his father had been buried at Christmas. He found the grey vixen in the coal hold, curled so tight her nose sat under her tail, and he had a stone in his fist before he thought better of it.

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She did not stir. Old Gilly at the lock had said a fox that sleeps aboard a boat is a boat that will not sink, and Abel had never believed a word Gilly said, but he left her be. He fed the firebox with ash wood and sat on the hatch with his back to the cold, listening to her breathe. Each breath pushed a little warmth past the sooty grate, and where it drifted under her tail the frost light caught it in short grey dashes.

Past midnight the ice spoke, a long groan through the hull, and the Marigold swung sideways towards the weir gate. Abel shouted for his mother, who was already leaning on the pole. The vixen woke all at once, uncurled, and looked at him as if he were the one who had overslept. Then she was over the coaming and down the bank, running ahead along the towpath, stopping every few yards to look back until he understood and followed with the pole.

They slid through the gates at first light with ice breaking white off the bows. When Abel looked back, the fox was sitting on the lock beam washing her face, and the tracks she had left across the frost ran back the way they had come, short and grey and broken, like someone counting out the miles.

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