Black and grey ornamental lion head tattoo with blue eyes and a blue gem crown on the outer upper thigh.

Ornamental lion head with blue gem on thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large lion head sits on the upper thigh, framed by mandala-like patterns, scrollwork and a blue gem above the brow. The linework is fine and clean, with stippled dotwork shading across the face and mane, and the greys are blended with light highlights. Blue tones appear only in the eyes and gems, against a mostly grey palette, and the design is centred and symmetrical on the leg.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Lion Lion head Mandala Gem Eye Crown Scrollwork Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion of Varnholt did not sleep, the old women said, because he kept his eyes open for the river. Every spring the water came down out of the hills carrying the dead leaves of the high forest, and every spring a lion's head of carved silver was pulled from the mud at the ford, and every spring the miller's daughter, Ottilie, was the one who found it, because she was the only one who rose before the frogs.

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The year she was sixteen, she brought the head home in her apron and set it on the windowsill to dry. It was heavy and cold and worn smooth at the brow, where a stone had once been set. The villagers said the stone had been taken by the old king's brother, who had drowned in the ford wanting more than he was given. Ottilie did not believe in drowning as a punishment. She believed in patience, and in the way the scrolls along the mane caught the light like lace on a wet hem.

She sat with it through a winter of candles. She traced the dotwork with a needle, one tiny point at a time, until her fingers ached and the mane looked like frost on a field. When the river rose again in spring, she carried the head back down to the ford and set it on a flat stone in the shallows, facing upstream. In the morning it was gone, and in its place sat a single blue stone the size of a plum, washed clean, glittering in the current.

She kept the stone. The lion never came back to the ford, and the old women still say he is watching for her, though nobody in Varnholt has ever seen him sleep.