Realism style tattoo of a lion wearing a feather headdress with blue eyes and red face paint, on the outer forearm.

Lion in feather headdress on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A lion's head wearing a feather war bonnet-style headdress, with black fan feathers and leaf-like shapes fanning out behind it. The fur and face are shaded in soft greys and black with fine detail around the muzzle and mane, while the blue eyes, red face markings and yellow-orange tones provide colour accents. The design fills the forearm, with a beaded bracelet visible at the wrist.

Realism Forearm Lion Feather Face paint Blue eye Mane Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lorry gave up forty miles past the last petrol station on the Barstow road, which is how I came to be sitting on the tailgate at dusk with a lioness resting her chin on my shoulder. Her name was Juniper. She had been with the show since she was a cub, and she knew a breakdown was only a delay, the same as I did, so neither of us was in a hurry.

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The headdress lived in a trunk behind the cage, left over from a summer show that folded before I joined. Someone had stitched black fan feathers onto a leather band and then, as a joke, added leaf-shaped cards painted to look like more feathers. I fitted it on her that afternoon while we waited, and she sat still for it like a dowager at a christening. Mrs Hale, who kept the accounts, had once painted red stripes on Juniper's cheeks for a photograph. I had kept the greasepaint in my coat pocket ever since, and I added a second stripe so the first one didn't look lonely.

A truck came over the rise after dark and slowed, and its driver, a woman with a cigarette and a wide hat, leaned out to see what sort of madness we were. She stared at the lioness for a long minute, then laughed and said she had seen stranger things on the Nevada line. She towed us to the next town on a rope that smelled of diesel and oranges, and told me the desert takes what it can and gives back the odd thing when it gets bored.

We reached the yard at sunrise. Juniper rode the last miles with her head out between the slats, feathers flattened back by the wind, and when a jackrabbit darted across the highway she watched it go with the same calm she gave the crowds. Mrs Hale came out in her dressing gown, took one look at the headdress, and asked whether it was meant for the Christmas show. I said it was, and the lion yawned as if she had heard it before.