Thigh tattoo of a sketched deer with a turquoise crescent moon on its brow, a sunburst above, and a hand mirror, with turquoise and purple watercolour washes.

Sketched deer and hand mirror on a thigh

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A sketch-style deer head and shoulders sit on the outer thigh, with a turquoise crescent moon on its brow and a black sunburst of radiating lines above. A hand mirror with an ornate handle hangs beside the deer, with a thin purple line running vertically through the design. Loose turquoise and purple watercolour washes sit over black linework, and the composition fills the length of the thigh.

Thigh Deer Crescent moon Sunburst Watercolour splash Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Ferrier had the ovens lit by four and the first tin loaves proving by half past, but the doe was at the yard gate again. She had come every morning since the frost, standing with her head low over the bin lids, a pale crescent of light on her brow that caught the glow from the bakehouse window. Nell did not feed her. Her mother had always said never to feed the wild things that came close, because they only came back for more.

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The mirror was in the drawer where Gran kept the proving cloths. Nell found it looking for the bench scraper, an oval hand glass with a handle worked like curled ironwork, its silver gone soft at the edges. Gran had used it to check her lipstick before the Saturday market and never once said where it came from. Nell held it up to the window. In the reflection the deer had come right up to the pane, nose almost touching the glass, and when Nell turned round the yard was empty.

By six the sky over the moor had gone from ink to slate, and a thin line of light split the rim of the hills as though someone had struck a match behind them. Nell carried the first trays out to the cooling racks. The doe was back at the gate. This time she turned and walked up the lane towards the old quarry, looking over her shoulder once, the way people do when they expect to be followed.

Nell did not follow. She set the mirror face down on the flour bin and went back to her dough. When she tipped the first loaf out of its tin it was warm and split cleanly along the top, and the sun came up in a black spray of rays over the chimneys, which she decided was as good an answer as she was going to get.