Bold black tribal-style design of a wolf leaping to the right, shown as a solid silhouette on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Leaping wolf tribal design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A solid black wolf mid-leap, facing right, with its tail streaming out behind and its front legs extended. The body is filled with flowing black shapes and white negative space that suggest fur and musculature. The image is a high-contrast black and white design on a plain white background, with no skin or body part visible.

Blackwork Wolf Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the snow came over the top of the Cragg on Tuesday and has not stopped since, so forgive the state of this paper. I am writing on the back of the inn's tally sheets because the good stock went to the rooms. Mr Ashby is still snowed in upstairs with his cough and his opinions. The wolf came down the valley road on Wednesday night, I am nearly sure of it, a grey shape in the lamplight that cleared the stone wall in one long leap and was gone before Father got the door bolted.

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Father says it was a dog. Father says a great many things when the price of barley is up. But I saw the tracks at dawn, four pads spaced wider than any dog I know, and they stopped dead at the edge of the yard as though the animal had simply decided to fly.

We have kept the lamp in the window since. Mrs Pryce from the mill cottage came up on Thursday to say her ewes are calving early and she is afraid for the lambs. I told her what you would have told her, that a wolf which has come this far has come for something it cannot find elsewhere, and she gave me a look that said I have your mother's tongue. She left us a cheese.

I have been thinking about what you said before the ship sailed, that a thing which leaps the wall does not always leap back. I am not sure you were right. I think it may be waiting beyond the drift for the thaw, and I think it knows the road better than we do.