Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a stag's head and antlers in a teal oval frame with pearl beading, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stag head with antlers in a jewelled frame

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A stag's head with branching antlers faces right, set inside an oval frame with a teal background, scrollwork and a row of pearl beads. A gold-rimmed teal stone and a red and gold collar sit at the bottom of the frame. The deer's face is shaded softly in browns and cream, while the antlers and frame use bold black outlines and flat colour.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By nine o'clock the stag has been watching the dancing for three hours, and you have decided he disapproves. He hangs above the bar at the Fellside Institute, head turned sideways as though someone has just said something rude about his antlers. Nobody remembers who first put him up. Gordon Pike says it was his father, the winter the roof leaked, and that the beast was already dead by then, so there was no one to ask him to move.

Keep reading

Someone has strung pearls along the frame, the same way the bride's mother strung her own wedding necklace, and the string is working loose at the bottom. You notice the trouble when Pike's daughter asks you to help with the fairy lights. The green stone in the gold rim has a broken clasp beside it, and a fleck of old glue around its edge. You know that glue. You put it there when you were twelve and had been told not to touch, and the stone came away in your hand like a sweet from a tin.

You never confessed. The grown-ups were so pleased with the stag's new shine that nobody looked closer, and the story of the glass stone never got beyond the cloakroom. Now, with the fiddles going and the bride laughing at the far end of the room, you take a safety pin from your bag, thread the clasp, and hang the pearls back the way they were.

Pike raises his glass to the stag. You raise yours too, and the stone catches the light, a bead of glass wearing its gold as if it had always been meant to.

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