Black and white ornamental flash design of a wolf head with detailed linework, dotted shading and patterned feathers, with no body placement shown.

Ornate wolf head design in black ink

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical wolf head faces the viewer, with pointed ears, a dark nose and direct eyes. The face and ruff are filled with fine linework, stippled dots and intricate patterns that resemble feathers and scrollwork. The drawing is shown in black ink on a plain white background with no colour.

Blackwork Dotwork Wolf Wolf head Ornament Feather Pattern Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last northbound stopped at Carrick Road at twenty to midnight, and by then you had already swept the waiting room twice, because the lamp above bench three had a habit of buzzing that made the porters jumpy. The grey wolf was standing on the platform when the train came in, not hiding, just waiting with its head level like a man checking a timetable. Its ruff lifted in the wind off the cutting, and the feathers in it rattled like loose tickets.

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Nobody else seemed to see it. Mrs Pargeter with her cello case saw a dog. The guard blew his whistle and looked straight through. You went down the steps with the lost property ledger under your arm, because lost property was the one thing you were paid to notice, and you wrote: one wolf, no ticket, carrying nothing. It watched you write. Its eyes were patient and very dark, and the scrollwork around them seemed to shift whenever you looked away, the way frost moves across a window.

'You'll want a ticket,' you said, because a rule had to be spoken aloud or it did not count. The wolf lowered its head towards the open door of the last carriage. Inside, the seats were empty except for a single grey feather lying on the table, fine as ink. You picked it up. It was warm. When you looked back the platform was bare and the train was pulling north, its red lamp shrinking into the dark.

In the morning the ledger had a new line in your own hand that you did not remember writing: one ticket, paid in full, to wherever the wolf was going. The feather sits on the counter beside the kettle. Every night since, you check the lamp above bench three, and the last train comes in on time, and the platform stays empty, and you leave the door of the final carriage unlocked.