Lion head tattoo on a finger

You will laugh at me, but I have finally finished the lion. Old Mr Halloran at the foundry said I'd never get a mane right on something the size of a fingernail, so I sat at his bench every evening after the furnace cooled, with the magnifier strapped to my head like a miner, and I cut the thing a hair at a time. The eyes took longest. He wanted them looking straight out, not sideways, the way he said a lion looks at a man when it has already decided not to bother with him.

The ring is for Dorothy's wedding on Saturday. She asked for nothing fancy, only that the lion should look as if it could still be coaxed out of its den. I told her a lion on a finger is a poor sort of vow, since it can't be locked in a drawer, and she said that was the point, that a thing you wear is a thing you can't misplace. I did not argue. She has a temper that would make a lion think twice.

On Thursday, when I brought it round to the flat above the bakery, Dorothy's mother was already there with a sewing box and a face like a closed door. She turned the ring over under the lamp for a long time. Then she said, quite softly, that her own father had been a lion-tamer at a travelling fair and had never once in his life worn a ring. I didn't know what to say, so I said the mane was the hardest part, and she laughed, and the door opened a crack.

I'll post the sizing tape with this. Tell Mam I'm eating properly.

Yours, Iris