Black dotwork tattoo of a spotted fawn with its head bowed, sitting on the side of a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork fawn on the side of the ribs

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small fawn with its head lowered is outlined in solid black and shaded with stippled dots, with pale spots scattered across its back. The linework is clean and the dot shading gives the body soft tonal depth against the skin. The tattoo is in black and grey, placed along the side of the torso, with a grey knit fabric draped across the frame.

Dotwork Ribs Fawn Deer Spots

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The barge has been moored below Hatherleigh lock for nine days now, and Father has stopped asking when we'll go on. The reason is the fawn. It came down the towpath the first morning, before the mist had lifted off the water, and stood with its head lowered as if the river were a low table it had been asked to eat from. Its back was freckled with pale spots, as pale as the frost on the cabin roof, and I counted eleven before it looked up at me.

I have been counting them every morning since. Eleven on Monday, nine on Thursday, and this morning only six, though I may have miscounted with the light coming off the water. Mum says the spots fade as the young ones grow into their brown, that it is nothing to fret over. I did not tell her I had been fretting since the first week, sitting on the coal box with my tea going cold.

Yesterday I left a heel of bread on the bank, and the fawn took it without any fuss, then stood beside the hull close enough that I could hear it breathing through its nose. I wanted to tell you that. You always said I was the sort who could not leave a thing alone, and you were right.

Tomorrow the boat moves on to Stourport. I have told Father I will walk the last mile ahead of the horse. If the fawn is there at first light, I will count again, and if there are none left, I will still know where they went, because I have put the number in this letter, and it will be yours to keep.

Love, Mae