Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a howling wolf head in front of a pale moon on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Howling wolf with moon on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf's head is shown in profile with its muzzle raised and mouth open in a howl. The fur is built up with stippled dotwork shading and defined linework, and a shaded halo around a pale moon sits behind it. The image is in black and grey and framed closely on the upper arm, with a studio interior blurred in the background.

Dotwork Traditional Upper arm Wolf Howling Moon Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats came in late that year because the fog sat on the water like wet wool, and Tomas stood on the harbour wall with a lantern he could barely see past. Six boats had gone out after the herring at first light. Five had come back through the murk by the sound of their oars knocking against the wooden pins, and Tomas could hear the men shouting names he knew. The sixth was the Morag, and her crew were Ishbel's two boys.

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Old Ishbel had told him about the wolf when he was small. It came down from the hills above Skerrow only when the moon was full, and it never touched the sheep. It sat on the shingle at the low tide line and lifted its grey head, and the people of the village said it was a dog that had gone into the sea off the point and never stopped looking for its master's boat. They left a bucket of salt herring on the rocks for it, and no one tried to be seen watching.

That night the moon was full but hidden, a pale coin behind the cloud. Tomas heard the wolf before he saw it, a long rising note that climbed out of the fog and seemed to come from every side of the bay at once. Then the fog thinned, just for a breath, and the moon showed through as a ring of light over the water. Far out, a dark hull turned toward it. The Morag came in on that line of light, her bow lifting over the swell, and the boys threw their rope before the hull had stopped moving.

In the morning the shingle was empty except for a row of prints running down to the water and not coming back. Ishbel fed the bucket of herring to the gulls and said nothing about it. From then on the village left the bucket out every full moon, and no boat from Skerrow was ever lost in fog again.