Black and grey geometric lion head tattoo with dotwork shading and orange, red and teal circles on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric lion head with coloured circles

Geometric · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A lion's head is drawn in faceted, angular linework, with stippled dotwork shading on the muzzle, mane and cheeks. Solid translucent circles in orange, red and teal sit behind and beside the head, and a red faceted shape appears beneath the chin. The black and grey lion is set against a pale, softly lit limb and a grey concrete background.

Geometric Dotwork Forearm Lion Big cat Circle Polygon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You know the old lion by his silence now. Sultan used to shake the guy ropes when he woke, but since the wet spring he lies with his great angled head on his paws and watches the tent flap as if it owes him money. You are the one who sits up with him in the straw after the last house, because your father sat up with him and his father's sister sat up before that, and nobody in the Halloran family has ever been good at sleeping through a bad night.

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The letter from the council came on a Tuesday, pinned under the stone that holds the ticket box. Three more pitches refused, the field at Thornbury sold to a man who wants houses. Your uncle read it aloud twice, folded it into his waistcoat pocket, and went to check the spotlights, the orange and the red and the teal gel that has bled to nothing, because the show has to look like a show even when it is ending.

On the last morning you lead Sultan out before the hands are up. The frost has cut the paddock into grey planes and the hedges are black lines drawn with a steady hand. You unclip the chain and expect him to bolt for the road, or to turn back for the straw, but he walks past the gate to the centre of the field where the ring used to be, and stands there while the sun comes up behind the wood, a red coin, then a bright orange, climbing through the hedge like someone lifting a lamp.

He lowers his head. The light catches his mane and throws every angle of it across the grass, and for a moment the whole field looks built for him. You stand at the gate with the chain still in your hand and understand that you were never going to be the one who decided this. The lion lies down in the circle the sun has made, and it holds him there until the frost goes.