Black and grey realism tattoo of a lion's head framed by a dreamcatcher with feathers, on the outer thigh.

Lion and dreamcatcher on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic lion's head with a full mane is centred above a dreamcatcher, with a second dreamcatcher below it and feathers hanging from both. The inset photographs show close-ups of the feather shading and the dreamcatcher webbing, which uses fine, even linework. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey shading on a large area of skin, with a soft, blended background.

Realism Thigh Lion Dreamcatcher Feather Mane Web Flower Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the knots before you learn the sea. Your uncle Teodor ties them on the quay at Peterhead while the boats sit low and grey against the wall, and he shows you the sheet bend, the clove hitch, the way a line runs out without taking your fingers with it. Your mother doesn't come down to watch. She has the kettle on in the cottage above the harbour and a view of the whole bay from the kitchen window, and she tells you that a man who can't see the weather in the clouds should stay ashore.

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The first night out the swell lifts the trawler and drops it so hard the crates slide across the deck. Teodor sits in the wheelhouse with a flask and a cigarette he doesn't light, staring at the radar as if it owes him money. He hands you a square of old net, the mesh tight as a spider's work, and tells you a story his grandmother told about a web strung across the window of a hut on Lewis. Every knot in it, she said, was a prayer for a boat that wouldn't come back, and the web caught what the wind couldn't. You don't know whether to believe him. You turn the net over in your hands until the sky goes pale behind the cloud.

By morning the sea has gone flat and oily, and the gulls are working over a shoal of mackerel that flashes like spilled coins. Teodor hauls the last of the lines himself. When the cod come aboard in a thrashing heap, he picks out one small feathery grey one from the mess, looks at it a long while, then slips it back over the rail. He says nothing. You understand that you have been given something, though you couldn't say what, and you keep the net square in your coat pocket all the way back to the quay.