Realistic black and grey lion head roaring above clouds, tattooed across an upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Roaring lion and clouds on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head roars with its mouth open and teeth visible, filling most of the frame. The mane and face are rendered with soft, detailed shading, and the lion appears to emerge from clouds that wrap around the lower part of the arm. The ink is mostly grey and brown tones on warm skin, set against a plain light background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Lion Cloud Mane Roar Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third time the lion roared, the clouds came down off the Scarrow ridge and sat in Dunmarrow like wet wool on a line. My mother kept the bells, and she sent me up with a lantern, a tin ear-trumpet and a loaf wrapped in muslin, because I was the only crier in the valley who could still climb the goat path without stopping to be sick.

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The path ran through the cloud for an hour before it thinned. Grey vapour pressed against my face and tasted of struck flint. Then I saw the mane first, a dark tide of it rolling out of the murk, and then the eyes, amber as the lamp glass in my hand. The lion did not look at me. It was roaring at the sky over the ridge, mouth wide enough to swallow the lantern, teeth yellow as old piano keys, and every roar pushed the cloud back a little before it folded in again like a tide with nowhere to go.

I had expected a king's beast gone mad with grief. Instead I found a thorn the length of my finger wedged above its back teeth, and a sun it could not find, hidden behind its own weather. I rang the bell. I shouted the names of the orchard and the mill and the baker's girl until my throat split. When the roar came again I answered it with a note from the trumpet, and for one breath the lion went quiet and turned its great head towards me.

I pulled the thorn with my gloves on. The lion did not bite. By the time I reached the bottom of the path, the clouds had lifted off the valley like smoke from a snuffed wick, and the sun was lying gold across the mill roof. I never told my mother about the thorn. I only told her the lion had thanked me, and she laughed until she had to sit down.