Black and grey realism lion head tattoo on the inner wrist, with the fist raised above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head on a wrist

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head facing the viewer, with a full mane shaded in soft, feathered strokes around the face. The eyes, nose and muzzle are detailed with darker tones, and the mane fades into lighter areas at the edges. The tattoo sits on the inner wrist and forearm, with a clenched fist and part of the hand in the frame above it against a plain wall.

Realism Forearm Lion Lion head Mane

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming off the canopy in ropes since six, and by eleven Mrs Okafor's pears had gone soft at the corners. I was counting change for a woman who wanted a brass candlestick for her mother's grave when the lion came down the aisle. Not a real one, obviously. A stuffed toy the size of a loaf, its mane gone grey from being dragged through puddles, carried by a man in a yellow oilskin who stopped at my stall because its glass eye had caught the light of my paraffin lamp.

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"How much for the carriage clock?" he asked. It was a clock with no hands, its enamel crazed like a dry riverbed. I said two pounds. He counted coins out of a tin shaped like a bus and came up forty pence short. I told him to keep the clock. He asked whether it still worked, and I said it hadn't since my father owned it, but time ran slow in the rain anyway, so nobody could tell the difference.

He nodded as though that was a reasonable answer and set the lion on the counter, facing me, its mane fanned across the wet wood. "Mind him for a minute," he said. "He's not used to crowds." Then he went off between the stalls toward the fish market, and the rain closed behind him like a curtain.

I sat with the lion for the rest of the afternoon. Nobody came for the candlesticks. At closing I picked up the clock to wrap it and felt something shift inside the case, a small brass click. I eased the back open. Folded inside was a paper slip in careful capitals: HE IS YOURS NOW, MIND THE MANE. Beneath it, the second hand had been wound, and it was ticking.