Black and grey realism tattoo of a howling wolf below a full moon, with smoky shading across a person's upper back and shoulder.

Howling wolf and moon on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf with its head raised and jaws open is shown in profile, howling beneath a pale full moon. The fur is rendered with soft, feathered linework and smooth grey shading, with the highlights lifting off the dark background. Dark smoke-like clouds surround the wolf and moon, and the design fills most of the upper back in the frame.

Realism Back Wolf Moon Howling Smoke Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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You will think I have finally lost the run of myself, but I am writing to say the wolf came back to the allotment last night, and this time I did not go out with the torch. I sat on the upturned crate by the bean poles and watched it sit at the edge of the wild patch beyond the compost heap, its nose lifted to the moon as if the thing had been hung there for it particularly. The moon was near full and sat over the church tower like a coin someone had set down and forgotten.

Mrs Okonedo next door says it is the same beast that took the Harrises' hens in the spring, but I have my doubts. A thief does not sing. When it opened its jaws the sound went up and up and then broke into something close to a question, and every dog on Larch Road answered it. Then the smoke from Tom's leaf fire drifted across the lane and softened everything, so the wolf and the moon and the dark hedge were all one grey smudge with the edges rubbed out.

I have been thinking about Dad's garden at Clee, the way he would stand at the back door after supper and say the night was getting ideas. You would have laughed at me going out there with the kettle in one hand and my cardigan buttoned wrong. I did not go closer. I only raised my mug to it, the way you would to a neighbour across a fence, and it looked at me for a long moment before turning back to the moon.

I am planting the garlic on Saturday. Come and help if you can, and bring the good secateurs, the ones that do not slip. We might leave a row of cabbages unpicked by the far wall, just in case.

Love, Eddie