Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a ram skull above an animal face with a faded purple circle behind, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ram skull and animal face on thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A symmetrical tattoo shows a ram skull with curled horns resting above a stylised animal face with a central nose and detailed fur. Fine linework and stippled dot shading build up the skull, face and mandala-like patterns above and below. A soft purple circle sits behind the head, with the rest of the design in black and grey.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Horn Mandala Circle Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The galley of the collier Morwenna Rose smells of scorched fat and wet wool at four in the morning, and you have been awake since two, scraping the grill with a wire brush while the ship rolls under you like a tired horse. Above the stove, pinned to the bulkhead with a tin tack, hangs the ram's skull the bosun dragged aboard at Newcastle. Nobody remembers who gave it to him. Its horns curl past the edges of the hatch, and when the lamp swings, the cracked brow catches the light and seems to nod.

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Cook Halloran said the ram had been the figurehead of a brig lost off the Tyne in the great gale, and that the sea gave back whatever it wanted. You did not believe him, but you did begin to talk to it. Each dawn you set a cup of cold porridge on the shelf beneath the skull, and each dawn the bowl was empty by the time you turned around. The only other soul who came below was the boy, Teddy, who swore on his mother he had not touched a thing.

Then came the storm off Flamborough. The stores shifted, the lamp guttered out, and in the dark you felt something settle against your shoulder, warm and deliberate, like a dog that wants to be let in. You struck a match. The skull was still on its tack. Beneath it, scratched into the dented steel of the stove door, were rings of circles, one inside another, the way the bosun's grandmother had drawn the compass rose on the chart you were never allowed to touch.

By morning the sea had flattened and the bowl was scraped clean. You rubbed the rings off the door with your sleeve, though not before you noticed that the dawn light coming through the porthole had settled behind the skull in a perfect purple circle, as if something had been waiting all night to be let out.