Two matching fine line black tattoos on inner forearms, a fox with the word always and a stag with the word protego.

Matching fox and stag forearm tattoos

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching outline drawings of a fox and a stag in profile, each made from a single fine black line. Each animal has a word in cursive script beneath it, reading always under the fox and protego under the stag. The tattoos sit side by side on pale skin against a plain light background, and the stag's antlers reach toward the top of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Fox Stag Deer Antler Script Always Matching tattoo Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stag came down from the high pines the week the frost first held, his antlers so wide he had to turn sideways to slip between the larches. Below him, in a hollow under the bracken, the fox was already awake. She had heard the hunters' dogs in the next valley, and she knew what that meant for anyone with a bright coat.

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Stay, the stag said. The fox laughed at him, since she had never needed a stag for anything. But he showed her the word his grandmother had cut into the lintel of a shepherd's hut: protego. Hold. Cover. The old men said it could turn a blade if you meant it with your whole chest. The fox said that was nonsense. The stag said it was only nonsense until someone stood in front of you.

The hounds came at noon with their tongues out and their breath steaming. The fox ran for the scree, and the stag walked out into the open meadow and lowered his head, so that the first dog to reach him found a wall of branching bone and went rolling into the frozen ferns. He did not hurt the dogs. He only stood there, and the hunters, seeing a beast that would not be moved, called the dogs back and turned for the town.

That night the fox climbed to the shepherd's hut and found the stag already there, grey with cold. She took a stick of charcoal from the hearth and wrote on the frosted door in her small, careful hand: always. He read it in the morning and said nothing, which was how she knew he had understood.