Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head with flowers on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head in profile with a flowing mane faces left, framed by a large lotus-like flower, small blossoms and a branch with clusters of petals. The linework is loose and sketchy, with soft grey shading in the mane and along the petals. The design fills the thigh in a tall composition, with the lion's head near the top and the flowers spilling down to the lower edge.

Botanical Thigh Lion Lotus Flower Blossom Branch Mane Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion came down off the scree the summer the wells at Tamzar failed, and he walked the caravan road with his head held low, as if the sand had asked him a question he could not answer. His mane had caught pink blossom from the last almond trees on the ridge, and nobody who saw him that week forgot the smell of it, sweet over the dust.

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A carter named Haddu found him at the third milestone, lying with his chin on a bundle of dried lotus stems that had fallen from a passing cart. Haddu had two skins of water and a daughter waiting in Ghat. He could have walked on. Instead he knelt, poured a little water into his cupped hands, and held it out, and the lion lapped it without lifting his head from the ground.

They travelled together for nine days. The lion never hunted and never roared. At each well the old men asked Haddu why he kept such a beast, and Haddu said only that the beast kept him, because every time the road forked the lion turned toward the way with water, even when the sand hid it.

On the tenth morning the lion stopped at the edge of the oasis, laid a single lotus flower on the path, and walked back into the hills. Haddu carried the flower to Ghat. His daughter pressed it between two stones and kept it on the sill until the wind took it, and by then the road had grown green with the first rains.