Black and grey ink drawing of a stag, wolf and bear head stacked one above another in a realistic style, on a light grey background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stacked stag, wolf and bear heads

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A stag's head with full antlers sits at the top, with a wolf's head beneath it and a bear's head at the base, forming a vertical stack. The animals are rendered in fine, dense pen linework and hatching that builds shading across fur, eyes and noses. The image is in black ink on a pale grey background with no colour, and the stacked arrangement fills the frame from top to bottom.

Realism Stag Deer Antler Wolf Bear Animal head

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The stag came down to the toll-house at first frost, the way it always does before the snow shuts the pass. It stood in the yard with its antlers catching the grey light and looked at me as if I owed it the rent. Father would have given it the last of the barley. I gave it a bucket of water and let it be.

Behind it, the wolves kept to the scree above the chapel ruins. I counted five, then four, then five again, and none of them came close enough for the dogs to find them. Mrs Ashdown from the lower farm says the big grey bitch lost her cubs to the hunters at Carrow, and has watched the road ever since for the men who did it. I don't know if that's true. I know she sleeps with her head on her paws, facing the valley.

The bear is the worst of them and the least bother. He came up the track on Tuesday, sat on his haunches by the water trough, and waited, polite as a bailiff, until I brought out the honey tin I keep for emergencies. He ate it all, licked the lid clean, and walked off towards Dun Fell without looking back.

I think they are waiting for the thaw, same as the rest of us. When the pass opens I will walk down to Kirkby with the ledger and tell the clerk the toll-house is closed for the winter. Keep the kettle on for me. I'll be home by Candlemas, God willing, if the stag lets me go.

Yours, Ruth