Black and grey realism tattoo of a roaring lion in front of a pale moon, with leaves and paws, covering a person's upper back, with a small green tribal dragon on the right shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Roaring lion and moon on a back piece

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large realism tattoo of a roaring lion with its mane rendered in soft, fine shading, set in front of a pale full moon. Leaves and two large paws frame the lion in detailed greyscale shading, with smooth gradients across the fur and foliage. A small green tribal dragon sits at the upper right, the only colour in an otherwise grey composition that fills most of the back.

Realism Botanical Back Lion Moon Leaves Paw Dragon Tribal Mane

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the ninth floor of Calder House could say when the lion arrived. Mrs Okafor's door was always open to the landing, and by March there was a lion sitting behind her sofa, its mane grey in the light from the window, eating the pigeons she brought in from the walkway in a paper bag. The children said it had climbed the stairwell because the lift had been broken since Christmas. The caretaker said it was a dog that needed a bath.

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When the moon was full, the lion went to the window and roared. It was not a loud roar exactly, more a pressure in the glass, and it rattled the milk bottles on every balcony from the ground to the top. The old men who played dominoes under the bins said it was talking to the moon, and that the moon answered by coming a little closer, pale as a plate over the car park. Nobody argued with them, because the car park was quieter than it had been in years.

Then the council sent a man with a clipboard. He stood on the landing and looked at the lion, and the lion looked back, and he wrote something down and went straight back down the stairs, counting each step out loud. Mrs Okafor said he had seen a lion before, and she was right, because in the morning the lift was working and the man's clipboard was lying on the bottom step, with a single leaf pressed flat under the clip.

The lion stayed until the moon went thin. On the last night it padded down nine flights, one paw at a time, and the whole block heard every step. In the morning there were prints in the wet concrete by the bins, big as dinner plates, and beside them a long trail of leaves that nobody had seen growing anywhere near Calder House.