Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Llama head with patterned mane and leaves

Fine line · Mixed · Flash

A llama head in profile, facing left, with a decorative patterned band across the neck. The mane falls in long, feathered strands that end in leaf and tear shapes coloured teal and burgundy. The linework is fine and detailed, with grey shading on the head and mane against a pale, textured background.

Fine line Mane Feather Leaves Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, the fire's only good for another hour and this story runs longer than that. My grandmother told it to me, and she had it from a woman who walked the old salt roads before the water came back up the valley. Mind, she said, the llama was never the hero. The llama was the one who would not be hurried.

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Her name was Ysolde Brand, and she kept eleven llamas on the terraces above Cwm Dulais, where the rain came in sideways and the grass grew in ribbons. The grey one, Mooncake, had a mane so thick that burrs and seed heads caught in it and stayed. Every spring the wool came away in clumps, and every spring Ysolde combed out what she could and wove the rest into a band for his neck, red thread and teal, the patterns her mother had taught her by counting stitches on a slate.

Then came the drought, the year the reservoir cracked like a dropped plate, and the lowland families walked up the valley with nothing but their names and their goats. Ysolde gave them water from the one spring that still ran. Mooncake, who had never been asked for anything, stood among the strangers and let a small girl braid leaves into the ends of his mane. Leaves from the last green oak, leaves from the mill garden, a scrap of ribbon from a child's dress. By dusk he looked like a hedge that had decided to walk.

When the rain returned in autumn, the girl had gone with her family to the coast, and the leaves had dried into rattling ornaments that nobody dared pull out. Ysolde never cut them. She said a mane should carry what it has been asked to carry, and that was the end of the matter, so pass the kettle over and mind the embers.