Black fine line tattoo of a larger fox and a smaller seated fox with swirling flourishes on the ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fox and swirl linework on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A larger fox head in profile sits above a smaller seated fox, with the tail of the smaller one curling into a swirl. Thin, unshaded black outlines of uniform weight form the animals and several decorative flourishes that rise up the side of the ankle. The tattoo is in black ink only against plain skin, with a soft, blurred background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down by the fish boxes and mind the tar. You want the fox story, the one my grandfather told on this quay before the breakwater was built. There was a vixen who lived up the cliff path above Pellow Cove, and she had a cub who would not stop chasing the tails of the gulls.

Keep reading

One February the sea came over the wall in a night nobody wrote down, and the cub went missing. The vixen walked the harbour edge calling until her voice was gone to a rasp. Men with lanterns told her to go home and let the tide have its say. She didn't. She followed the smell of the cub's bedding down the slipway, and she found him on the lowest step of the old lifeboat house, soaked through, his tail wound round a loose rope fibre like a ribbon on a maypole.

Here's the part they leave out in the pubs. She didn't carry him. She sat beside him on the wet stone and waited, and the water went down an inch, then another, and when the lanterns finally came round the corner she was still sitting there, upright, as if she'd been there all along and the sea had merely been impolite.

So when you see that picture under the lamp, the big head turned out towards the water and the little one sitting close against its side, you'll know what it means. Not danger. Just the decency of staying put until the tide turns. Now drink your tea before it's cold, and mind the cat on your way out.

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