Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a stag head with antlers, pine trees and a flying bird, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Deer, pine forest and bird on ribs

Blackwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A stag's head with branching antlers sits at the centre, with its face framed by a pointed shape containing pine trees and a small peak. A bird in flight and a trail of small dashes sit above the antlers. The design uses solid black fills and fine grey shading, with the open areas of skin left as negative space, and it is shown on the side of the torso.

Blackwork Geometric Ribs Deer Stag Antler Bird Pine tree Forest Mountain Dashes

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas had been counting paces for three days when the stag came down through the larches and stopped at the edge of his survey line. He held the brass end of the chain in one fist and the notebook in the other, and the animal regarded him with the patience of something that had watched surveyors come and go for a hundred years. Its antlers branched like a leafless hedge against the grey sky. Above the ridge a raven tilted away, and the pale dashes it seemed to leave behind looked to Tomas like the marks he was making himself.

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Mrs Gell at the inn had warned him the stag was no beast to chase. The valley kept its own count, she said, pouring his tea without asking. Every creature that crossed the line was written down somewhere, and the mountain never forgot the sum. Tomas had laughed at her. He had a commission from the county, a clean map to be inked by Friday, and the mountain was nothing but contour lines and bearings.

He went back up at dusk with the theodolite. The stag was waiting among the pines, its head level with the dark triangle of peak he had drawn so carefully on paper. He sighted through the glass, and the figure in the lens was not a beast at all but a shape of trees and shadow, the same shape he had sketched without knowing why. He lowered the instrument. The raven came back over the ridge, the stag turned and walked into the forest, and the chain in his hand went slack.

On Friday he inked the map and left the valley blank where the stag had stood, a small clean space of paper. The county never asked why. Mrs Gell only nodded when he paid his bill and said the mountain had finally been counted properly.