Red dragon tattoo with spread wings and dark grey shading on the skin of the back.

Red dragon tattoo on the back

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A red dragon with spread wings and a curled tail is shown in profile, with its legs and clawed feet visible below the body. The linework is soft and sketchy, and the body and wings are filled with red ink with dark grey shading along the tail, belly and wing edges. The dragon sits centre frame on a pale, softly lit area of skin, with a dark strap visible at the lower left edge.

Back Dragon Wing Tail Claw

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dai Morgan had been told three times by the fire boss to stop drawing on the lamp-room wall, and three times he had gone back to it, because the wall was the only clean thing left in Cwm Tarian. He mixed the red from rust scraped off the old winding gear and the linseed his mother kept for the door hinges. The dragon came out of him slowly, wing first, the way coal came out of the face, in layers.

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Nessa Rhys watched from the doorway with her arms folded. "They'll have the wall down by Friday," she said. "Then what's the point?" He didn't answer. He was working on the tail, which curled round on itself as if it was listening for something under the hill. Down the road the last cage was going up the shaft for the final time, and the whistle sounded flat, the way it did when nobody was left at the other end to answer it.

When the paint dried it had a dull sheen, not quite red and not quite brown, and the rain that came off the Beacons that night ran it into soft edges so the wings bled into the stone. In the morning Dai went back with a stub of charcoal and went over the claws, then the belly, then the ridge of spines along the neck, until the thing stood out from the brick as if it had walked out of it on its own.

Nessa came with the bread van driver to see the wall before the men arrived with ladders. She stood a long time. "It's a daft dragon," she said at last. Then she took the charcoal from his hand and drew a small second shape beside its feet, a figure holding a lamp, so the creature had someone to stand guard over.