Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head with tribal swirls on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large lion head in profile fills the upper arm and extends over the shoulder, with the mane rendered in layered strands. Dark tribal swirls and scrollwork run across the face and muzzle, combining with soft shading and highlights for a realistic effect. The tattoo is in black and grey ink, photographed outdoors against a white tank top.

Realism Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Lion Lion head Mane Tribal Swirl Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had lain on the top field nine days when the lion came down the lane, and Agnes Tully was the only one awake to see it, because the ewes in the high pen were restless and she had gone out with a lantern to count them. The beast stood at the byre door with ice caught in its mane. The markings on its face were cut into the fur like the swirls frost draws on a window, and when it breathed out the breath hung in the cold air like a second animal. Agnes had a heel of bread in her apron. She told it plainly that the ewes were not for eating. It looked at her with the eye that was turned toward her, then lowered its head to the trough and drank.

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All that winter it kept the wolves off the lower pasture. Men came up from the valley with rifles and found only tracks that stopped at the wall and went no further. Each night Agnes left bread on the gatepost, and each morning it was gone. Sometimes there was a tuft of grey-gold hair caught on the wood, long as a finger, and she kept these in a biscuit tin under her bed until the tin would hold no more.

In March the thaw came off the ridge in a rush of brown water, and the lion did not return. Agnes walked up with the tin under her arm and found its tracks going over the stone and away, and on the flat rock where it had lain she saw a ring of scratched swirls, as if someone had drawn a pattern in the lichen with a stick.

She set the tin on the gatepost before she went in. By morning the hair was gone, and where it had been there was a single curl of frost on the wood, though the sun was already warm, shaped exactly like the ear of something that had decided to leave.