Colour tattoo of a seated fox filled with orange swirling linework and purple shading at the tail, on the inner forearm.

Ornamental fox on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A fox seated in profile, looking up and to the right, is outlined in black and filled with orange swirling, paisley-like linework. The tail curls around the lower body and fades to purple at the tip, with the ears and face picked out in lighter tones. The fox sits centred on a pale forearm against a plain light background.

Forearm Fox Swirl Paisley Tail Ornamental Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming down on the Tuesday market for three days, so the stallholders stopped calling out their prices and simply held their goods up like apologies. Old Mabry kept her pitch by the fish wall with a tarpaulin pulled tight over a single trestle. On it lay a bolt of orange cloth, and the cloth never seemed to dry, though nobody could say why.

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A fox came in under the tarpaulin at dusk, shaking water from her ears, and sat down on the wet cobbles as if she had paid for the spot. She did not speak. She looked up and to the right, toward the clock on the corn exchange, and waited. Mabry, who had buried two husbands and a good deal of patience, understood that the fox wanted something unwound rather than sold.

So Mabry lifted the cloth and picked at a loose thread along its edge. Each loop came away in a spiral, a curl that opened into a leaf and folded into a feather, and the fox's tail, which had been lying flat, rose and took each new shape as it came. By the time the lamps were lit along the High Street, the cloth was a field of swirling paisley, and the fox was gone, leaving only a tail-shaped smear of purple light on the trestle, fading at the tip.

Mabry sold the cloth the next morning for a shilling to a boy who wanted a scarf. He wore it to school all winter, and whenever it rained the swirls under the wool grew warm against his neck, as if something were still sitting in the market, waiting for the next thread to be pulled.