Traditional flash design of a howling wolf beneath a teal crescent moon, with the banners Beware the Moon and leaves around it.

Howling wolf and crescent moon design

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A wolf with its head tilted back and mouth open in a howl, facing a teal crescent moon. Two scrolled banners reading BEWARE THE MOON and green leaves frame the wolf. Bold black outlines define the wolf's grey shaded fur, with red, green and teal used for the mouth, leaves and moon.

Traditional Wolf Moon Crescent moon Banner Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and keep your hands off the windfalls, they're wasp-bitten. You've been pestering me since midsummer for the story of the grey dog on Hobb's Hill, and the apples are in now, so I'll tell it the way my gran told it to me, sat on this same step with the press creaking behind her.

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Nell Harrow kept the top orchard the year the Bramleys came in heavy. Every full moon a wolf came up out of the bracken, grey as wood ash, and stood under the oldest tree with its head thrown back, howling at the sky as if the sky owed it money. Nell's father had nailed a board to the gate that read BEWARE THE MOON, and nobody knew who had painted the green leaves round the words, only that they stayed green right through January. Folk said the wolf wanted one apple and would take nothing else, and that whoever gave it up would never be bitten by the cold again.

So on the night the moon hung over the ridge like a thin teal blade, Nell went up with her basket and sat in the long grass. The wolf came close enough that she could see the red of its open mouth and the pale teeth, and it regarded her with one amber eye. 'The moon has taken three of my cubs,' it said, 'and it means to have the fourth. Give me the apple it's been eyeing.' Only then did Nell see that the moon was thinning a little more each night, and that the wolf had never been the one to fear it.

She picked the reddest Bramley and held it out. The wolf took it so gently it left no mark on her palm. Next morning the crescent had gone from the sky, and the board on the gate had a fresh leaf pinned beneath the word THE. My gran swore the moon never rose so thin again. Now, who's for the press? Mind the wasps.