Black and grey dotwork and linework tattoo of a roaring lion with a floral mandala mane and an eye motif on its forehead, on a thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Roaring lion with mandala mane on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A roaring lion with its mouth open and fangs visible fills the thigh, with a jewelled eye-like motif and dotted beads on its forehead. The mane is built from layered petal and feather shapes, and the lower face and chest are shaded with stippled dots and fine outlines. The image is a black and white close crop of the upper leg, with the wearer's shorts visible at the top edge and the tattoo centred in the frame.

Dotwork Blackwork Thigh Lion Mandala Floral Eye Bead Roar

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook of the Marigold had been feeding the lion for nine days before anyone asked why the bread kept going missing. It came up through the galley hatch at the change of the watch, a grey beast with its mane laid out in petals like the lid of a flower pot, and it sat by the cold stove as if it had paid for the passage. Above its brow a single jewelled eye stared out, and beads hung in a dotted row across its forehead that clicked whenever it turned its head.

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The mate wanted it shot. The captain, who had a sister in Hull and read too many almanacs, wanted it fed. Cook Harriet Lowe, who had fed eleven men on salt pork and hope since Bristol, set down a dish of cold mutton and said nothing. The lion ate every scrap. Then it opened its jaws wide, and the roar that came out rolled the pans off their hooks and turned the sea white along the hull for a mile in every direction.

The wind came back the next morning and filled the sails. The lion was gone, but on the flagstones lay a single bead, warm as a coin from a pocket. When Harriet picked it up, a thread of light ran from it back up the hatch and out toward the empty sea.

She kept a plate out every night after that, and every morning there was another bead on the floor, a little warmer than the last. She threaded them on twine and hung the twine above the stove. By the time the Marigold raised the Humber the twine had wound her wrist four times, and the lion had stopped coming up through the hatch. Some nights, when the fire ticked down and the water went quiet, she swore she heard it purring under the floorboards, patient as a tide.