Black and grey fine line tattoo of a fox surrounded by botanical motifs including hops, lavender, chamomile and a passionflower, placed across a person's upper back.

Fox, tea bag and herbs across the upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A fox sits upright at the centre of the composition, with a tea bag above it and a ring of plants around it, including hop cones, lavender, chamomile, a passionflower at the base and several leaves. The linework is fine and dark, with hatching and stippling used for fur, petals and leaf shading. The design is entirely black and grey and is arranged in a loose circle that fills most of the upper back.

Botanical Dotwork Back Fox Lavender Leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fox came to the kitchen door on the third night of the snow and sat upright on the step, brush curled round its feet, as if it had paid for a room. My mother put out a dish of cold mutton and called it the lodger.

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Nobody else in Hollin Cross kept a pot of tea going through a winter that shut the pass for eleven weeks. We had hops in a sack from the beams, lavender tied over the range, chamomile in the cellar, and mint in a crock by the sink. My mother grew passionflower in a window box for the sleeping draught she gave the old drovers. The fox liked the drying room best. Each morning there were fewer leaves on the rafters and small paw prints in the flour dust, and each morning my mother only laughed.

In February a stranger came down off the fell with frost in his beard and a muslin tea bag in his coat, stitched shut with green thread. His sister had sent it from the coast, he said, and he couldn't bear to drink it alone. He hung it on the hook by the fire and fell asleep in the settle. When I looked again the cup was empty and the fox sat in the grate, eyes half closed, looking pleased with itself.

The pass opened in April. The stranger left before the coach, and that morning the step was bare. On the sill lay a little bundle, plump with dried mint and lavender, tied with green thread. My mother said the fox was only settling a debt. I still put out mutton every night and keep the kettle warm, in case somebody needs a cup before the road opens.