Black and grey Japanese-style dragon tattoo across a man's shoulder and chest, with further tattoos on his upper arm, forearm and ribs.

Dragon shoulder and chest piece on a muscular torso

Japanese · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A shirtless man stands against a dark background, with a large dragon tattoo spanning his right shoulder and chest, its head and claws resting on the pectoral area. The dragon is rendered in black ink and grey wash with fine detailed scales, feathered mane and cloud-like shading. Further black and grey tattoos cover the upper arm and forearm, including a fish-like form, and a smaller design sits on the ribs.

Japanese Shoulder Chest Upper arm Forearm Ribs Dragon Fish Cloud Bird Claw

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hanne had been lighting the ovens since the bells of the lower town stopped, and by the time the sky over the harbour turned grey the dough had risen twice. Her husband Tobiah was out at the well. The dragon came up the cobbles without a sound, which was how she knew it was not a dog.

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It came to the back door with its head low and its mane full of cloud, grey as wet slate, with the smell of the sea on it. It did not ask for gold. It said it had eaten nothing since the autumn the river froze, and it asked for bread. Hanne told it the loaves were not for dragons. The dragon said a loaf was a loaf to a hungry thing, and it laid one claw on the step, where a fish lay gasping, silver-grey and still catching the lamplight.

Hanne traded. She gave the dragon the day-old loaves and took the fish, salted it and hung it in the rafters. Each dawn after that the dragon came back, and each dawn she had a loaf ready and a fish to hang. Tobiah grumbled that the smell got into the flour. Then one morning the dragon brought a small bright bird in its claws, a thing that had flown too high into the cloud and lost its way. It set the bird on the step and bowed its head, and Hanne understood it was paying for the last loaf before the frost.

That winter the bread in the lower town was the best on the coast, and nobody asked why the baker's oven never cooled before dawn. On the coldest mornings, when the window frosted white, a warm patch would bloom on the glass where the dragon had breathed, and through it Hanne could see the shape of a cloud drifting off over the water.