Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fox head with flowers and beads in a wreath

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch of a fox head in profile, eyes closed, set inside a circular frame of flowers, leaves and acorns. Beaded chains and dangling leaf and droplet shapes hang from the base of the wreath. The linework is fine and shaded lightly, and the drawing is shown in greyscale on cream paper in a sketchbook.

Fine line Botanical Fox Flower Leaves Bead Wreath Acorn Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, The acorns came early this year, so I have finally strung the beads the way Walter always did, on the wire that hangs from the pear tree. You will laugh that I still do it at all, but the fox came up through the orchard again on Tuesday, sat in the long grass with his eyes shut as though he were listening to the bells three villages off, and I did not have the heart to shoo him.

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Walter said it was the same fox that had been in the orchard when we were children, and that foxes are not particular about who they keep company with, only that the garden is kept. So each October he gathered oak apples and crab-apple leaves and wound them round the old cart wheel by the wall, threaded the blue glass beads through, and hung the little tin droplets from the bottom where the wind could catch them. Since the funeral I have not known how to do the leaves. They come out crooked. The fox does not mind.

He has grown thin. Mrs Ferris at the shop says a dog from the Lord's farm has been about after the hens, and I have half a mind to go and tell him the orchard is spoken for. But I am not going to chase anyone off. I keep thinking of what you wrote from the ship, that the sea is so wide a man forgets which way is east, and how the fox always seems to know which way is home.

Come back at Christmas if the captain will let you. Bring me a proper bead, one from over the water, and I will thread it on the end where Walter left a gap. Your loving sister, Ada. P.S. The fox has not opened his eyes once. I think he is only resting.