Snarling wolf head in profile

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A wolf's head faces right in profile, mouth open to show a row of sharp teeth and a snarl. The neck and mane are filled with overlapping scale-like shapes outlined in bold black linework, with the eye and brow drawn in heavier strokes. The image is flat grey on a plain white background, with no shading gradients beyond the grey fill.

Traditional Wolf Wolf head Snarl Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last of the plates cooled on the anvil while Corra counted the rivets again, because her father had always said a number you have not counted twice is a number that will lie to you. Nine hundred and twelve scales for the mantle, and one head to crown it, a wolf in profile with its jaw wrenched open. Harrow wanted it to look hungry. He had paid in salt and two good ponies, and he did not care that no wolf had been seen in the valley since his grandmother's time.

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She cut the teeth deeper than the old pattern called for, filed the brow heavy, and let the mane overlap like a roof of fish scales. Her father, dying by the hearth, watched her through the smoke. "You have made him angry," he said. "Wolves are not angry. They are only hungry, and honest about it." She said nothing and kept hammering.

Harrow came at dusk with torches, turned the mantle over in his big hands, and laughed at the teeth. He was pleased. He had it nailed to the gatepost of the hall so the snarl faced the road over the pass, where the men of the south would ride in to trade their wool.

By midwinter the southern riders no longer came. They had seen the wolf's face in the dusk and taken the river road instead. Corra walked out each frost to check the rivets, and the scales rang like struck coins in the cold. The open jaw caught the grey light, and she kept the gate unlatched so the beast could look at the empty road for as long as it liked.