Flash design of a stag head with antlers, feathers and flames, above crossed axes and a ribbon, drawn in engraved linework with red accents.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stag head with axes and flames

Dotwork · Mixed · Flash

A stag's head faces upwards, with antlers decorated by feathers and a beaded cord, and a stippled flame rises beside it. Crossed axes and a ribbon sit beneath the head, with red rays radiating behind. The fur and antlers are rendered in fine engraved hatching, the flames in dotted shading, and the palette is mainly grey and black with red highlights.

Dotwork Stag Antler Feather Flame Axe Ribbon Ray Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, 14 August. The stag came down the scree at first light, not running, just walking through the smoke as if someone had sent it to fetch us. Its antlers were hung with a grey feather and a string of wooden beads, the way Old Anna dressed the ones she shot before she let the men touch them. Tom wanted his rifle. I told him the fire had already taken its supper.

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We had two axes between us and a strip of firebreak to cut before the wind turned. Tom swung his as though he were angry at the trees. I cleared the bracken from the ridge in long swathes and tied the cut ends with red rag where the sparks had caught. The stag stood on the far bank and watched us with its jaw lifted, not bawling for water but almost singing, as if the whole burning hillside were a hymn it knew the words to.

By noon the wind went north, just as Anna had promised it would, and the flames climbed the slope beside the stag in a column of dots and tongues, hissing, then quiet. The beast didn't flinch. When I looked for it afterwards there were only hoofprints in the ash and one feather snagged on the firebreak tape, threaded with a bead.

Tom says it was a trick of the smoke. I have the feather in my breast pocket. Tomorrow we start on the north slope, and I have told the crew to leave any beads they find lying where they fell.