Fine line tattoo of a lion cub with a small red accent, under the words never forget who you are, on the side of a person's ribs.

Lion cub outline and quote on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A photograph of a black fine line tattoo on the side of a torso, with the words never forget who you are in cursive script above a cub outline. The lion cub is drawn in a single continuous black line with a small pink or red patch on its head. The skin is lit softly against a pale wall and the tattoo sits centrally in the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Lion cub Quote Script Lion

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rains had failed for a second season, and the cubs of the pride had learned to stop asking where the water went. Oba had stopped asking too, which worried his aunt Wanjiru more than any question would have. So one hot afternoon she sent him down into the dry riverbed to fetch the flat grey stone that marked the old crossing, the one their grandmothers had sat on to watch the herds come down to drink.

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The riverbed was cracked into plates that curled at the edges like old paper. Oba found the stone under a bush of thorn, half buried, and tried to lift it the way he had seen the big males lift a fallen branch. It would not move. He pushed harder. Sand ran off its edge in a thin hiss. Beneath it lay a dark patch of damp earth, and in the damp, a single green shoot no longer than his claw, bent over as if it had been searching for something and had given up.

He sat beside it until the shadows stretched long. Then he curled himself around the shoot the way his mother curled around him when the thunder came, tail tucked over his nose, and he waited. He did not know what he was waiting for. A hornbill came down, considered him with one bright eye, and went away again. A wind rose and fell. When the light turned orange he heard his aunt calling from far up the bank, saying his whole name, the way the elders did when they wanted you to know whose son you were.

He climbed the bank slowly, tail low, and left the stone where it lay. "You didn't bring it," Wanjiru said. "No," said Oba. Behind him, in the damp under the thorn, the shoot had lifted its head a finger's width towards the last of the light. He did not look back. He had been told all his life who he was, and for once he found he could walk home without needing to see it again.