Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Roaring lion head in profile

Black and grey · Flash

A lion's head is shown in right-facing profile with its mouth open in a roar and its eyes partly closed. The mane is drawn with loose, flowing strokes that fall down the right side of the image, with small dark beads hanging from several locks near the bottom. The work is in pencil or fine ink with soft shading on the face and sharp dark lines on the mane, and the image is in black and grey on a plain light background.

Lion Mane Roar Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, The lamp in the yard went out again at midnight, so I am writing this by the glow from Mrs Okafor's bakery across the road, where she leaves the ovens on for the early lorries. You asked in your last letter whether the lion still walks the wall on Cutler Street. He does. Somebody painted him there in the spring, his head turned towards the river, mouth open as if he has been waiting all winter for someone to answer.

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The old men who play dominoes outside the chippy say the beads hanging from his mane are the ones the Dunmore girls lost when the carousel burned, one for every night the fair ran late. I don't believe that. I think the painter was tidy and kept finding stray beads in the paint tin and could not bring himself to throw them away.

Last Thursday I climbed the fire escape at two in the morning with a tin of brown paint and a brush, meaning to cover him over before the council sent someone with a bucket. I got as far as his nose. He had one eye half shut, as though he were only pretending to sleep, and I found I could not do it. I left the tin on the step and came back down with paint on my sleeve and nothing to show for it.

So the lion stays. When you come home at Easter, bring the beads from Grandad's biscuit tin and we will string them somewhere he can see them properly. Ask Mrs Okafor for the key to the back gate. Your sister, Ruth.