Black and grey forearm tattoo of an animal skull with fangs, a feathered wing and a shaded rose, with a partly visible ribbon banner above.

Skull, wing and rose on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm sleeve shows a large animal skull with bared fangs, a feathered wing running down one side and a shaded rose near the wrist. A ribbon banner with partial lettering sits higher up the arm, and more tattooed linework appears at the top of the frame. The shading uses fine stippling and soft grey tones on a light, bare-skinned arm.

Dotwork Realism Forearm Skull Wing Rose Banner Feather Animal skull Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had buried the Hollin road by Tuesday, and by Thursday Nell Garside had stopped sweeping the step because there was nowhere for the snow to go but back on the step. The Rose and Crown held four guests: two drovers who played cards for matches, a schoolmistress waiting on a thaw, and a man in a wet wool coat who had walked up the valley with a sack over his shoulder.

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He would not say what was in the sack. He asked for the room by the chimney and paid in silver older than any coin her father had kept. When he unwrapped the thing on the taproom table, the drovers stopped their cards. It was a wolf's skull, long in the muzzle, its jaws still hung with teeth as yellow as candle wax. Someone had painted a grey wing across the lid of the crate, feathers laid over one another like slates on a barn roof.

"It was your father's," the man said. "He sold it to my master in the spring of '61, and my master lost it on a wager at Kirkby fair. I've been walking the bad roads ever since, looking for the house it came from." Nell thought of the shelf above the bar, where her father had kept a bowl of dried rose petals and a bird's skull she had always taken for a crow.

She took the skull from him and weighed it in both hands. On the underside, where the bone was smooth as soap, a name had been scratched and half worn away. She carried it to the hearth and set it down beside the bowl of petals, and outside the window the snow kept falling on a road that no longer existed.