Black and grey realism tattoo of a howling wolf in front of a full moon with clouds, on an upper arm.

Howling wolf and full moon on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf with its head raised and jaw open, howling, fills the lower right of the design, set against a large pale full moon with dark wispy clouds around it. The wolf's fur is rendered with soft shading and fine directional strokes, while the moon has smooth gradients and a small dark bird shape crosses its upper left edge. The piece is in black and grey ink and is photographed on the outer upper arm, with the edge of a dark sleeve visible at the side.

Realism Upper arm Wolf Howling wolf Moon Cloud Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewes came down off the top field the week before the snow, and every night after that Hannah Pryce counted them twice by lantern light: once at the gate, once more in the hay barn. Thirty-one, then thirty-one. The carter had seen wolf tracks on the far side of the ridge, though nobody at Coldharbour Farm had seen the animal itself. What they heard was the howling, long and low, rising off the moor whenever the moon sat full above the larches.

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Her father said it was only wind working through the rocks. Hannah did not think wind sounded like that. Her grandmother, who had grown up on the same moor, used to say a wolf howls to ask the moon for its name back, and that whoever answers must be the one who goes out to meet it. Each time the cry began, a crow crossed the moon's upper edge, slow and black, as if drawing a line under the sentence.

On the night the frost went hard enough to crack the water trough, the fold gate stood open and one lamb was gone. Hannah followed the prints across the white field, big pads pressed deep, until the trail ended at the trees. The wolf was sitting at the edge of the larches with its head thrown back. The lamb lay by its feet, alive and very still. Hannah did not run. She hummed the low note her grandmother had hummed over the cradle, and the howl stopped halfway through.

The wolf lowered its head, took the lamb gently by the scruff, and carried it back across the snow to the fold. It set the lamb down inside and walked off into the larches without looking round. In the morning the only tracks led away from the farm, and the crow sat on the gatepost, watching the moon go pale over the moor.