Black and white drawing of a circular tattoo design split into four quadrants, showing a sword in a ring, a dragon, a snowflake and a sun, framed by rope and swirl borders.

Four-part design with sword, dragon, snowflake and sun

Black and grey · Flash

A circular design divided into four quadrants, each holding a different motif: a sword inside concentric rings, a coiled dragon, a six-armed snowflake and a sun with wavy rays. A twisted rope border runs along one edge, with scrolling filigree and a dotted line framing the other sections. The artwork is solid black on white with a dark vignette background, and the linework is bold and graphic.

Sword Dragon Snowflake Sun Rope Swirl Filigree Dotted line Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on Coldmere market for nine days, and by the ninth the cloth stalls sagged like wet sails. Maud Pennell kept her awning tight and her pots dry, and when the miller's boy ran in shouting that the dragon was coming down from the fells, she only asked him to mind the ginger cake.

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Everyone knew the dragon wanted paying. Years back it had lent the valley a sun to dry the barley, and the sun had never been given back. Its price was simple, and the elders had never managed to meet it: a sword forged by a hand that had never lied, a snowflake that would not melt in the palm, and a light from a heart that had nothing to hide. Maud had the snowflake in her apron pocket, cut from a sheet of tin the night before, and she was frightened of it.

She walked out to the mill with the water running off her hood in ropes. The dragon lay in the wheelpit like a coil of black rope, its eyes the colour of old pennies. She set the sword on the stones, then the snowflake. The dragon breathed on the tin, and it did not melt. It only smiled, as dragons do, and said the sun had been a poor loan.

Maud tipped the last thing out of her pocket, the lid of her own tea tin, worn bright from years of use. The dragon took it gently, and the clouds broke over the fells. By the time she reached the market again the stalls were steaming, the sun lay in every puddle, and the miller's boy had eaten half the cake.