Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a small raptor style dinosaur with a curled tail, on the calf.

Dotwork raptor on a calf

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A small dinosaur with a raised head, serrated spine and long curled tail, shown in profile and standing on its hind legs. The figure is built from a bold outline with stippled dotwork shading across the body and a few solid dark areas along the back and tail. The design is in black and grey and sits centred on a pale lower leg against a dark background.

Dotwork Calf Dinosaur Tail Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The creature was taped beneath the seat of the Halverby coach with four strips of brown parcel tape, and Dorota Vashti had to lie down in the aisle with her torch to see it properly. It was the length of a forearm, grey and speckled all over like frost on a windscreen, with a raised head and a row of serrated spines running from its skull to a tail that curled round in a long hook. The declaration form said ornament. The little grin on its face said nothing at all.

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"Ornament," said Anselm Varga from the third row, before she could ask. He was eighty if he was a day, in a tweed cap he had not taken off since the bus left the terminal. "For my grandson. He is seven and wants to be a palaeontologist. I promised him a real one, but the shop was shut." Dorota looked at the tape. "Your grandson's ornament has been held down with tape." "He kept trying to take it to bed," Varga said. "It is a poor sleeper, and so am I."

Pieter leaned over from the next booth and said it was a toy, so there was no duty on it, which was true, and then said there was duty on resin, which was probably also true. Dorota ignored him. She noticed the tail hooked back towards the gate they had just passed through, as though the creature had been waiting to leave the country and had only been stopped by the tape. She peeled one strip free, then another.

She set the raptor on the counter under the lamp. It was lighter than it looked, and the dots along its flank caught the light. "Ornament," she said, and stamped the form. Varga thanked her, tucked the creature under his arm with its head poking out, and walked back to the coach as if he had won something. Dorota watched him go and thought the thing had the look of a creature that knew exactly where it was headed, which was more than most passengers managed.