Black and grey horse head tattoo with a windswept mane sweeping across the upper back and shoulder blade.

Horse head with flowing mane on the back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A horse head sits on the right side of the upper back, with its mane trailing left in loose, wind-swept strokes. The horse is rendered with soft grey shading and fine dark linework, while the mane and background strokes fade into washes of grey and sharp black streaks. The tattoo is in black and grey only, and the pale skin of the back forms a plain backdrop.

Back Horse Horse head Mane Brushstroke Wind

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mare came off the moss the week the wind turned east, and by the time Nell Harrower reached the gate her mane was streaming behind her like smoke off a wet peat fire. Nobody in Sallow Cross had seen a horse that dark run that way, with the grey light coming through its legs and the heather bending flat beneath its hooves. Old Tam swore it was the same mare that had hauled the postman's cart into the bog in 1911 and walked out again with the mail still dry.

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Nell did not go after her. She put the kettle on, took down the tin of sugar lumps her father kept for the carthorses, and sat at the window until the wind dropped. He had sold the mare's foal to a dealer from Kendal the spring before, and the mare had paced the top field ever since, calling for it in a voice like a rusted hinge.

At dusk the rain came sideways off the fell, and the mare was standing at the back door with her head low and water running from her forelock. Nell held out a sugar lump on her flat palm. The mare took it, then turned towards the hills and blew through her nostrils, long and slow, as if asking whether Nell meant to come.

Nell pulled on her father's oilskin, dropped the latch, and swung up bareback. They went out over the moss in the last of the light, the wind tearing their breath away, and at the dark line of the ridge the mare stopped and waited, her mane lifting like a flag. Far along the crest, where the wind came from, a grey foal lifted its head and called, and the mare answered it.