Black scorpion tattoo on the upper back of a woman photographed from behind against a white backdrop.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scorpion tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long, streaked hair is seen from behind, sitting on a white fur rug and wearing white lace underwear. A black scorpion tattoo with solid outlines and detailed segmented body sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade. The ink is entirely black on a warm skin tone, and the plain white background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, the fire won't last longer than my breath. You want the tale of Hob's Keep? Then you'll hear about the scorpion, because nobody in the valley ever told it right, not even my father, and he was there when the north tower came down.

Keep reading

The lord of that place kept his gold in the undercroft, behind a door of black oak with a lock the size of a loaf. Nobody got past it. Not thieves, not the bishop's men, not the wind that came off the marsh each November and tried the shutters. What stopped them was a thing no bigger than a man's thumb, a black creature with a curled tail that lived in the mortar between the stones and only came out when the moon was thin. The old steward called it the lock's keeper. Dogs wouldn't go near it.

One winter a girl called Morwen came up from the village with a bundle of washing and a plan. She had a fine needle and a steady hand, and she meant to work the lock while the castle slept. Halfway through, the keeper crawled out of the crack, climbed onto her wrist as calm as a clerk going to his desk, and stopped there, where her pulse beat. She didn't cry out. She held perfectly still until dawn, and when the steward found her she was still holding the needle, and the keeper was gone.

The lord hanged her anyway, so the stories say. But the gold stayed locked, and the tower stood another hundred years until the marsh took its foundations. Some say the keeper went down with the stones. My gran swore it walked out of the rubble, black as a burnt match, and went looking for the next lock to guard.

Now mind the hearth as you go out. And if you find your pockets lighter tomorrow, you know which way to look.

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