Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental fox inside a scalloped circle

Black and grey · Flash

A fox sits upright in profile, facing left, with its head and body filled with dense decorative swirls, scrolls and curled patterns. The outline is a clean black line on white, with the fill pattern drawn in fine, even strokes. A thin circular frame with a scalloped edge sits behind the fox, and its tail curls at the bottom of the composition.

Fox Swirl Filigree

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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

Hush now, the night sister's coming round and she'll have my hide if we wake the ones who are sleeping. Right, you want the fox. Mind the cable by your foot, that's the bed pump, and sit where I can see your face.

Keep reading

The fox lived in the hedge behind the old infirmary, and she had a habit of unpicking things. Every night she took a loose thread from the laundry baskets and worked it into patterns on the bark, scrolls and curls so fine the frost could not break them. Dennis the porter found her at it one wet February, stitching a ring of thorn leaves around the moon someone had painted on the boiler room door. He asked her what she was making it for.

She said the ward was full of folk who had lost their pattern, and a pattern holds a body up the way a banister does on the stairs. Then she wound the last thread round her own tail, bit it off with her teeth, and trotted under the gate. In the morning the man in bed nine, who had not said a word in a week, asked Nurse Okafor for a pencil. He drew a circle with a scalloped edge on the back of his menu card and handed it over.

So that's why the hems on Four are stitched in little curls, and why you never pull a loose thread, not even when it's tempting. Now go on, back to your bed before the sister sees you out of it. Mind the cable.