Large neo-traditional colour tattoo on a side of the torso showing a wolf head, a hand holding a ring, bats and a red-haired figure in an ornate frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Large colour piece with wolf, hand and birdcage

Neo-trad · Other · Colour · Photo

A large, densely packed tattoo covers the side of a torso and part of the arm. Its main elements include a wolf or fox-like head at the top, a muscular hand gripping a ring, bats, and a red-haired figure seated inside an ornate green-and-gold frame. The linework is bold and dark, with smooth colour shading and grey smoke or mist filling the gaps between motifs. Colour ink dominates, with greens, reds and warm skin tones against grey background shading.

Neo-trad Other Wolf Hand Ring Bat Birdcage Woman Smoke Frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wolf came up the lane the night the fair packed up, carrying a brass ring in its teeth, and it set the ring on our gate post as politely as a butler laying out spoons. My sister Nell and I had been sweeping popcorn from the dodgems all evening. We both knew what the ring meant, because Mr Crane had told us often enough that whoever wore it could take the thing that was theirs.

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Hester had been Mr Crane's since the spring. She sat inside the green and gold frame on the back of his cart, a glass-fronted birdcage with curlicues of iron, and she combed her red hair with a bone comb while the bats hung from the awning above her like folded umbrellas. Nobody ever saw her eat. The gilt on the cage bars had gone dull where her fingers rested. Mr Crane kept the key on a chain at his wrist, and his wrist was a thing I still dream about, grey and corded, with a hand at the end of it that looked too long for the sleeve.

When the wolf turned its head, the smoke from the cart rolled out across the cobbles and stood up in the shape of a man. He held out his palm. I pushed the ring onto my own finger without thinking, and the bats came down off the awning in one great soft rush and went round and round the cart until the lantern glass sang. The wolf sat back on its haunches. "Name the price," it said, in Nell's voice.

I named my own. Mr Crane laughed until his hand let go of the key. Hester stepped out of the cage with her comb still in her fist, and she walked down the lane between Nell and me without once looking back.

The next morning the frame stood empty on the cart, its green paint blistered in the frost, and a single red hair caught on one of the curls of iron. The wolf was still at our gate, waiting, with the ring gone from the post.