Neo-traditional wolf head with blue eyes and an open snarling mouth, with red and orange leaves and a partly visible script banner, tattooed on a knee.

Snarling wolf with banner on knee

Neo-trad · Other · Mixed · Photo

A snarling wolf head fills the centre of the tattoo, with blue eyes, a grey and cream muzzle and bared teeth. Bold black outlines define the fur and features, with soft blended shading across the face. Red and orange leaves sit behind the head, and a partly visible script banner reading memory runs across the top, all in bright colour against the skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The Pardoe orchard came in early this year, so we have been picking since the first week of August, sleeping in the packing shed when the rain comes sideways off the ridge. Ma would hate the state of my hands. Ted says the Bramleys are the best he has seen in twenty years, and he has been saying that since we were children, so I have stopped listening.

The wolf came down on the Thursday, when the leaves at the bottom of the far rows had gone red at the edges. Nobody saw it arrive. Mrs Pardoe's old collie went flat on its belly under the cart and would not come out, and when I went to coax it, there was a grey head pushed through the hawthorn at the hedge, looking at me with eyes so blue they seemed lit from behind. It opened its mouth and showed every tooth it had. I stood still the way Dad taught us with the bull, and after a long minute it turned and walked off up the slope as if it had only come to check the apples were ripe.

I went up the ridge with Ted on Saturday to look for it and found nothing but its prints in the mud by the old well, and a scrap of red leaf caught on the wire. Ted said the wolf was only passing through. I think it was keeping an eye on us, the way you watch a stranger in a new town. I have been wondering what I would tell you about it, and I suppose this is it. The orchard is quieter now, but every time the wind shakes the top boughs I look up expecting to see those eyes.

Write back soon, and tell Mum I am eating properly.

Love, Jo

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