Black and grey fine line tattoo of a small mouse in a flowing cape holding a sword, on the calf.

Mouse knight with sword on a calf

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A small mouse stands upright in a cape that billows to one side, holding a slender sword with an ornate hilt in one paw. Fine, delicate linework defines the fur, with stippled shading on the body and tiny dots scattered across the ground beneath its feet. The design is in black ink only and sits centred on the leg against a plain, light background.

Fine line Dotwork Calf Mouse Sword Cape Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rat had been at the oat sacks three nights running when Father decided the Tilly Ann needed a champion. Nobody else would volunteer, so the mouse who lived behind the galley stove stepped out, wearing a cape cut from a square of grey sailcloth and a length of my spare red ribbon tied at his neck. He carried a darning needle filed to a point, which he called a sword, and he marched down the gangplank onto the towpath as if the whole of the canal were watching.

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The rat was waiting by the lock keeper's hut, fat as a bolster and not in the least troubled. Frost had come down on the cobbles overnight, and every breath hung in front of us like smoke. The mouse lifted the needle. The rat laughed. The mouse said something I didn't catch, quiet and certain, the way you speak to a horse before you ask it for anything.

Then he did the thing I still think about. He stamped once, hard, and a scatter of spilt oats leapt off the frost in a fine spray, pale dots flung across the stones. The rat blinked at the grain in its eyes, lost its footing on the ice, and went for the reeds without a backward look. It never came near the barge again.

Father says the mouse went back to the stove and slept for a day. That evening I took the sailcloth down from its hook and found the ribbon retied at his neck, neater than I had ever managed, with a single oat caught in the knot like a medal.