Black ink tattoo of a stag silhouette with antlers and crossed arrows on the lower leg, shown in a close phone photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stag silhouette with arrows on a lower leg

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a stag with branching antlers and a head turned to the left forms the main subject, with thin black outlines for the legs and a bow-like arrangement of arrows crossing beside it. The work is entirely black ink with bold, filled areas contrasted against fine outlined lines, and it sits centrally in the frame against pale skin with a patterned blue fabric visible behind.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad, the snow came in on Tuesday and hasn't thought about leaving since. Mum says to tell you the pump froze twice, and that I'm not to walk the lower field alone. I did anyway, because the stag came down to the water trough at first light, and I wasn't going to let Harold Pike's boys get to him first.

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He's bigger than anything Grandad ever wrote about. His antlers branch like a bare hawthorn, black against all that white, and he stood with his head turned left, back towards the wood, as if someone had called his name from the trees. His legs were thin as fence wire. I stood by the gate with Grandad's bow across my back and three arrows in the quiver, and I did not lift a thing.

You'll say I'm soft. Maybe I am. But I kept remembering how you taught me to read tracks, how a beast tells you its business if you're patient enough to listen. He was going somewhere. His prints ran in a straight line to the stone wall, and not one of them stopped to drink.

I've hung the arrows on the nail by the back door, points down, so they can't tempt anyone. Come home when the road's open. I'll show you the tracks, and you can tell me I should have fired. Your loving daughter, Nell.

P.S. Mum says the bread has gone mouldy, but I ate the crust anyway.

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