Lion and lioness with purple flowers

Mixed · Flash

A pen-and-ink drawing of a male lion in profile with a wild, flowing mane, with a smaller lioness head partly tucked beneath the mane. A branch of purple flowers and buds runs through the mane on the left side. The linework is loose and sketchy, with grey shading in the face and mane, and the paper background is plain cream.

Lion Mane Flower Branch Blossom Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer to the lamp, the wind on this road steals words before they reach the far side of the fire, and I'll not have you miss the end of it. Mind the tea, it's scalding. So. The lion was old by the time the lioness began walking the Kessar road beside him, and his mane had long since gone the colour of dust after rain, which is to say it was never tidy and never would be.

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They had come a long way between them. Nobody knew where the lioness had been born, only that she walked as if she carried a map folded inside her chest. Every seventh summer, when the clouds came over the escarpment and dropped one honest rain, the thorn-wadi at Bir Sahal put out purple flowers for three days. Those three days were the only thing in that country worth crossing sand for. The lion wanted to see them once more before his eyes gave out. She said she would find the way.

The wind rose on the second morning and the sky went the colour of brass. The camel men tied their wraps over their faces and sat down with their backs to it. The lioness did not sit. She went ahead into the yellow dark with a sprig of blossom caught in her teeth, and the lion followed the scent of it, pushing his great head forward through the grit. The flowers snagged in the long hair of his mane, and by the time the wind dropped, a branch of them was threaded through it like a bridle of old silver.

They reached the wadi at dusk. The pools were brown and the thorn trees were shining. The lion lay down among the stones and the lioness lay down against his shoulder, turning her head so her muzzle rested in the dark tangle beneath his ruff. The flowers hung between them, still open. The camel men swear the blossom did not drop until morning, and that when it did, it had gone to seed in his hair.