Neo-traditional tattoo of a grey lynx with amber eyes, pearl necklace and red gem pendant, placed on the upper thigh.

Lynx portrait with pendant on thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo of a lynx head faces forward across the upper thigh, with a small flying squirrel wearing a red ribbon and pendant above it. Strings of beads and chains hang around the design, with a red gemstone pendant below and orange leaves on the right. The lynx is shaded in grey and black with amber eyes, while the red, orange and cream tones give the piece its colour.

Neo-trad Thigh Chain Ribbon Pendant Gemstone Leaves Animal portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lynx had worn the pearls so long that the village had forgotten they were ever anything but hers. Each autumn she walked down from the larch hills with her ears tufted like burnt grass, and each autumn the children ran to the fence to see whether the necklace still hung white at her throat.

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The squirrel, Tamsin, carried messages between the hill and the mill. She wore a red ribbon knotted at her neck, with a small garnet drop swinging from it, a gift from the miller's wife for a favour nobody remembered. Tamsin could glide from the alder to the water tower without once touching the ground, and she never repeated what she heard along the way.

One November the miller's girl, Gwen, lay under the eaves with a fever that would not break. The lynx came down to the mill yard and asked for nothing except that the squirrel fly the pearls up to the window. Tamsin took them one by one in her teeth and laid each on the sick girl's chest, counting aloud, and when the last one settled the fever broke like ice going off a pond.

The lynx wanted no thanks. She only asked Tamsin to bring the pearls back when the leaves turned again. Tamsin still does. Every autumn the squirrel rides the wind up to the larches, the garnet knocking against her collarbone, and every autumn the lynx lifts her chin so the necklace can be fastened once more, and the red leaves come down around them both on the path.