Colour realism tattoo of a red fox with autumn leaves and circular script across the upper back.

Fox and circular script on upper back

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of a red fox standing on a mossy rock, turned to the left, with a bushy tail curling toward the lower left. Soft shading and fine detail show in the fur, and warm orange, rust and cream tones dominate, with a few small autumn leaves beside the animal. Black cursive lettering follows a large circle around the fox, and the photograph is taken from behind the wearer, showing the whole design across the upper back.

Realism Back Fox Autumn leaves Rock Script Lettering Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fox came to the barrier at the hour the last lorry cleared, and by the second week of October I had stopped pretending I did not wait for it. I kept a tin of sardines in the drawer of the booth, the cheap kind with a key that always snaps, and each evening I opened it with my penknife and set the oil out on the flat stone beside the pole.

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Dobos, my supervisor, said foxes carried mange and that the crossing was not a petting zoo. He was right about the mange. But the animal never came closer than the stone, never took more than it was offered, and sat with its brush wrapped round its feet as if the whole frontier were a rumour it had decided to ignore. Beyond the wire the orchards were going rust and gold in the same thin light.

On the Thursday a man came through with a passport so worn the photograph had faded to grey. Teodor, he said, and he had been crossing this pass since he was a boy herding his father's goats. He watched the fox for a long time. "My grandmother said they know the roads nobody has mapped," he said. "She said you do not feed them. You become someone they can come back to."

When he had gone I walked out with the tin and found the stone bare, only a single maple leaf turning on it. Then the fox was there on the far side of the wire, looking back at me over its shoulder, patient as a clerk. I set the oil down. I was no longer sure which of us was keeping the border.