Solid black silhouette of a greyhound head with ears, combined with swirling black and white filigree scrolls in a blackwork style design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Greyhound head with scrollwork

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a solid black silhouette of a dog's head in profile, with long pointed ears and a narrow muzzle. Curling filigree scrolls in black and white with dotted accents sweep from beneath the head and extend to the right. The design is monochrome, with bold solid fills contrasting against fine, open scrollwork.

Blackwork Dog Scroll Filigree Swirl Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mr Okafor, I'm writing because the lift has been broken since March and Biscuit has decided the stairs are beneath her. Every morning at ten past seven she plants herself on the ninth-floor landing, long nose turned toward the stairwell window, and won't move until I've shut the door behind us and clipped her lead on properly.

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I thought it was the cold at first. Then I noticed she only does it when the wind comes up off the canal and carries the smell of the bakery on Ferris Road. She stands with her ears flat, then lifts them, like someone listening for a bell that's stopped ringing. Last Tuesday she pulled me all the way down to the car park, past the bins, to the old iron railings that curl round the dead flower beds. She sat beside the gate with her head tipped back as if she was reading the scrolls.

Tucked into one of the curls, under a skin of wet leaves, was a brass key on a faded red ribbon. I didn't touch it for a while. Then I remembered you had the flat on the ground floor before the Daleys, and you used to tie your spare key to that gate because you kept locking yourself out with the shopping. It might be yours. It might be nobody's. Biscuit doesn't care which, she just wants it looked at properly.

Would you come down on Sunday and see for yourself? Bring a bag of rolls from Ferris Road if you can still get them. If the key isn't yours, I suppose we'll have to decide where Biscuit takes us next.

Yours, Marjorie Pell, flat 9C