Black tribal-style flash design of a stylised animal with swirling tail and pointed ears, shown on a white background with a smaller inset copy.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised swirl animal design

Black and grey · Flash

A bold black line drawing of a stylised animal figure with pointed ears, a curved body and a long swirling tail. The linework is thick and solid with no shading, and the design is shown in solid black on white. A smaller inset version sits in the bottom right corner of the image.

Animal Swirl

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the fox has come back to the woodshed again, though I am no longer sure fox is the right word. Father swears it is a cat, a long-legged thing with ears like folded paper and a tail that curls back on itself like a fern unrolling. Tom from the mill saw it at dusk on the lane and says its tail went round the gatepost twice before it let go.

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I went out with the lantern on Tuesday to see for myself. The beast sat on the stile with its back arched, not afraid of me in the least, and the swirls of its tail caught the lamplight so that I could read the grain in the wood beneath. It looked at me the way Mother used to look at a bad loaf, as though I had made something wrong and it was too polite to say so.

I left a dish of milk on the step, feeling foolish, and went to bed. In the morning the dish was empty and there was a single black feather on the sill, shaped like a question mark, curled at the end.

Father has nailed the shed door shut. I have not told him I keep the feather in my apron pocket, where it rubs against my hand whenever I reach for the bread knife. Come at Michaelmas if you can. Bring the good thread. I think the village will need mending before the frost.

Your loving sister, Agnes