Fine line drawing of a stylised fox with flowing hair-like strokes, curls and leaf shapes in orange-brown ink on a peach background, shown as a design with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised fox line drawing

Fine line · Colour · Flash

A stylised fox with closed eyes and a long, flowing tail is drawn in fine orange-brown linework. Wispy strands, spirals and small leaf shapes fill the fox's head and tail, creating a flowing, ornamental outline. The drawing sits centred on a textured peach background with soft, even lighting.

Fine line Fox Swirl Leaves Line art

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marit,

Keep reading

The ferry didn't come on Tuesday, so the post has been sitting in Mrs Tulloch's porch since Thursday, and I'm writing this on the back of your last letter because I've run out of paper that isn't damp. The fox is back. You'll think I'm making up stories again, but she comes up the track every evening at the hour the gulls stop arguing, and she never once opens her eyes. I've tested it. I stood on the step with the lamp lit and waved my hand in front of her face, and she only turned her head a little, the way you would from a draught, and went on.

Her tail is the strange part. It isn't fur at all, or not only. It's long and feathered at the ends with leaves, copper ones and some dark red like the ones off the rowan by the kirk, and when she passes through the bracken they catch and stay caught for a moment before they drift loose and blow down the slope towards the harbour. Tulloch's boy has been collecting them in a jam jar. He says each one is a day somebody on the mainland has forgotten something.

I asked old Ewan at the shop what she was. He didn't look up from the scales. He said the foxes on Hallan were always the sleepwalking kind, that they carried the island's weather on their backs and woke only when a boat went out in trouble. Then he weighed my tea and asked after your knee.

So I've decided she is keeping watch, and that is why I haven't gone across to you yet. Come in the summer and bring your own lamp. Walk the track slowly. If she passes you with her eyes shut, don't call out. She's dreaming us safe home.

Love, Ros