Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a ram skull with curled horns, surrounded by flowers and leaves, on the thigh.

Ram skull and flowers on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A ram skull with curled horns sits at the centre of the design, framed by open flowers and leafy sprigs above and beside it. The skull and petals are built from fine stippled dotwork and clean outlines, with shading that gives the bone and petals depth. Below the skull, layered scalloped petals form a symmetrical fan, and the whole piece is in black and grey ink on the outer thigh against a brick wall.

Dotwork Botanical Thigh Horn Flower Leaves Petal Mandala Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the drifts have reached the second step of the back porch, so I have stopped clearing them and started counting them instead. Eleven since Tuesday. Mother says the pass will not open before the thaw, and the thaw, judging by the sky, is only a rumour.

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The guests have settled into the rhythm of a house with no way out. Mr Greaves plays patience at the long table and cheats at it. The Dutch couple have taken the room above the stove. Last night the old tup came down from the high pasture, the one with the broken horn that Father called the parson, and stood under the lamp at the gate with snow caught in his curls like a wreath. Mother said he had come to be fed. I said he had come to be counted, and she laughed for the first time since you left.

Father's skull of that same ram still hangs above the cellar door. I took it down this morning to brush the dust from its sockets and found an old papery nest lodged in the left eye, grey now and empty, its cells folded inwards like petals. I did not have the heart to knock it out. Against the black beam the bone looks so white that the carved vines Grandfather cut around the frame seem to be growing towards it.

If the pass opens on Sunday, I will walk down to the post at the bridge with this letter and you will have it by the weekend. If it stays shut, keep a lamp lit in the window for me. I will keep counting drifts until the horns show green and the nest has nothing left to hold. Yours, Ilse.