Black silhouette design of a horned serpent coiled around a staff, with a crown above, a crossbar with arrow tips, wings and three triangles.

Serpent dragon and crowned staff design

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black silhouette drawing of a serpent or dragon head with spiked crest coiling around a vertical staff topped by a crown. A horizontal crossbar with arrowhead ends, two bat-like wings and a group of four triangles sit within the coil. The design uses flat black fill with no shading or colour, set against a plain white background.

Serpent Dragon Staff Crown Arrow Wing Triangle Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tobias Renn swore the carving over the galley hatch was older than the Mercy Wren herself. It showed a sea serpent with a spiked crest coiled round the foremast, a crown balanced on the topmast and a yard set across the middle with arrowhead ends. Every Sunday he rubbed it with vinegar and a stiff brush, because the salt crept into the grain and turned the wood the colour of old pewter.

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The night the Mercy Wren lost her mainsail off the Dogger, the captain wanted the foremast cut away to lighten her. Renn stood in the companionway with a cleaver in one hand and the lamp in the other and said nothing for a long moment. The mast had carried four triangles of canvas through worse weather than this, and he knew the wood was sound beneath the paint. He said so. The mate laughed, but the captain looked at the carving, at the serpent with its jaws turned toward the stern, and told them to hold on.

They held on until the grey came up. The crossbar cracked at one end but kept its pin, the crown stayed level, and the serpent's wings bent with the gusts without breaking. When the sea laid down, the crew found the galley flooded to the ceiling and the stove dead. Renn lit it again with the last dry match from his tin, and the first thing he did was wipe the carving clean, the salt drying white in the grooves.

By noon the kettle was singing and the serpent gleamed, its crest throwing a small wet shine across the hatch. Renn set a bowl of porridge on the sill for the lad who had hauled the bucket all night, then tapped the carved coil once with his knuckle, the way a man tips his cap.