Three side-by-side photographs of a colour tattoo of a tiger face with cream circles on a person's leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Orange tiger tattoo on a leg

Calf · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a stylised tiger face with a red nose and orange and yellow striped fur, with a striped tail curling up at the right. Cream circles with dark dots sit above the head. The three panels show the same tattoo from slightly different framing, with the skin tone and lighting varying between them.

Calf Tiger Cat Stripe Circle Dot

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the tiger painted on the shutter behind the noodle stall, two hours after the last bus, in the same orange as the fish crates. Its nose is red as a fresh cut. Above its head float the cream discs the old woman sells for luck, each freckled with dark seeds, and she tells you they are moons that fell from the sky and were too heavy to climb back up.

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The tiger came down, she says, the winter the river froze. It walked the empty streets sniffing for anyone who had lost their way home, and it never hurt a soul. It only stood at corners until the lost person turned around. Its striped tail curls over the edge of the shutter as if it is still deciding whether to leave. You ask her if it ever did. She shrugs and hands you a moon, warm from the steamer.

Walking home, you test the disc against your palm and it is heavier than it should be. At the junction by the shuttered bank, a shape moves at the edge of the streetlight, all orange and black, and you stop. You do not follow it. You turn back the way you came, because that is what the story asks, and the streets seem to open for you one after another until the stall glows again ahead.

The old woman is still there, flipping eggs. "Forgot something?" she asks. You open your hand. The moon has gone cool, and a single dark dot has crept across its surface, as if something small had been counting your steps.