Fine line black ink tattoo of a howling wolf with swirling tendrils on the inner wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Howling wolf with swirls on the wrist

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small wolf head is shown mid-howl, with its muzzle raised and its outline drawn in thin, dark linework. Its body dissolves into curling, flowing swirls and tendrils that trail down below the head. The design is in black and grey ink, with light shading on the wolf's face and neck, and sits centred on the inner wrist against a plain, softly blurred background.

Fine line Other Wolf Howling wolf Swirl Tendril

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The landlady at Mrs Pryce's has put me in the attic room under the leads, which means I can hear the sea all night and the wind worrying at the slates. Last Tuesday the wind came up off the bay so fierce that Mr Ambrose, who sleeps two doors down and drinks his tea with the spoon still in, swore he heard a dog howling out on the headland. There is no dog on the headland. There is only the old lighthouse keeper's cottage, shut up since the war, and the gorse.

I went out after supper with a shawl over my head to see. The path to the point was slick with weed, and the grass bent flat in long curling lines, as if someone had combed it with their fingers. At the edge of the cliff, where the spray came up white, I found a grey-coated stray sitting on its haunches with its nose to the sky. It was not a dog. Its ruff was dark and feathered, and beneath its jaw the wet fur ran out into ribbons that lifted and twisted in the air, like the tendrils of sea-wrack when the tide draws back.

It turned its head and looked at me, then opened its mouth and sang one long note that went straight out over the water. The fog took it. When I looked again the ribbons had come loose from the animal entirely and were drifting off over the rocks, curling and unspooling into the dark.

I have not told Mrs Pryce. I think she would only say the fog gets into people's heads, and she would be right, but I have been leaving the attic window open a crack. Come up at Whitsun if you can. Bring your good boots.

Yours, Edie