Black and grey realism tattoo of an adult lion and its cub on the upper arm and shoulder, shown in a black and white photograph.

Lion and cub on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic adult lion head in profile fills the upper part of the design, with a lion cub's head in front of its mane at the lower right. The fur is built up with fine, dense linework and soft shading, and the eyes, nose and whiskers are rendered in detail. The piece is entirely black and grey, and the photograph is taken close up across the upper arm and shoulder.

Realism Upper arm Lion Lion cub Mane Portrait Big cat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer the brazier and mind the cup, it is hotter than it looks, like most things the brothers tell you. Now. You want the lion of Saint Aldric's, the one that came up the goat track the winter the snow shut the pass. Everyone says it was a miracle. It was not. It was hunger, and a grey dawn, and a lay brother called Tobin who had never once in his life turned away a creature that needed feeding.

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The lion came to the gatehouse with a cub held gently in its jaws, the way a cat carries a kitten, and set it down on the flagstones like a bundle of wet wool. Then it sat back on its haunches at the edge of the light and would not come one step nearer. Tobin warmed goat's milk on the hearth and dipped a rag in it, and the cub sucked at the rag while the great beast watched over the wall, its mane gone white with frost, its eyes never once leaving the small face in the doorway.

The abbot wanted it gone. The abbot wanted a great many things gone that winter. But the lion stayed on the terrace below the bell tower for three months, and every night when the cub cried it lifted its head and answered, low, the sound rolling down the valley like a dropped sack of stones. Tobin said it was asking for something. Nobody argued with Tobin twice.

The cub grew, and its mane came in dark as peat, and in spring the brothers opened the gate. The young one went down the mountain without a backward look. The old lion stayed on the terrace, face to the valley, and Tobin still carries it a bowl of milk each dusk. Some mornings the bowl is empty. Some mornings it is not, and he says that is how you know the cub is still out there, and that the old one has not stopped listening.