Black and grey dragon tattoo across the top of a foot and ankle, worn with a black pointed shoe and red pleated skirt.

Dragon tattoo on an ankle and foot

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a bare foot in a black pointed shoe with an ankle tie and a large silver ring buckle. A black and grey dragon-like creature with fine linework and soft shading wraps across the instep and up towards the ankle. The background is a pale grey floor with a red pleated skirt at the top of the frame.

Ankle Dragon Foot Ankle

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the gaslamps on Tallow Street have started to gutter and the night watch has gone off for its supper, so there is room for a proper tale. Old Mabry the cobbler kept a shop at the bottom of the hill, where the canal bends under the iron bridge. He made only one kind of shoe: black, pointed like a heron's beak, with a silver ring at the ankle to hold it closed.

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The dragon lived in the culvert beneath that bridge. Three hundred winters had worn it thin and grey, because the river had been buried and the lamplight no longer reached its water. One wet night it dragged itself up the steps, pressed one scaled foot flat against Mabry's sill, and said, "I want a shoe that fits a river." Mabry measured it with a tailor's tape while its tail knocked over his ink pots. It had no silver to pay him, so it offered its first tooth. He refused the tooth, took its name instead, and told it to come back at midnight.

He stitched the shoe by candlelight, working the ankle ribbon in red pleats so the lamps would catch it. When the dragon came back, it slid one foot inside, and the silver ring closed with a click like a lock turning. The creature stood, walked three steps across the cobbles, and looked surprised to find itself on land. Then it went down the steps, out along the towpath, and over the railing of the bridge, where the ring was left hanging on a nail. By morning the canal ran bright and quick again, and a single black slipper floated on it, pointing downstream towards the sea.

If you walk that bridge tonight, look for the silver ring on the rail. Mabry says it still hums when the river is high.