Black and grey ink design of a horn-shaped form with swirling curls, an oval gemstone and small stars, captioned Taurus, shown as a flash drawing.

Taurus horn with flowing curls and gemstone

Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a horn-shaped form with long, swirling curls spilling from its top edge, a shaded oval gemstone set with lace-like detail on its side, and a dotted arc above. Small four-pointed stars sit around the design, and the word TAURUS appears below with an italic quote beneath it. The linework is fine and hatched, with grey shading on the horn and no colour.

Horn Curl Gemstone Star Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud, The rain has been coming sideways across the Thursday market since six, and I have sold three horns and a sack of shavings, which the Pearsons' boy wants for kindling. The stall canopy drips in a neat ring around me, a dotted line of water I could count if I had the patience. I'm writing because I finished the piece for Mrs Abernethy's nephew, the one you told me no one would pay for.

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The horn came from a bullock off the Hallam farm, a dark tip I steamed and split and scraped until it was thin enough to show the lamp through. Then I did what you suggested and let the top curl away in shavings, the way you used to let your hair fall loose by the range. I wound each curl round a bodkin and set it, forty-one of them, and they dried stiff as bracken. The garnet I fixed on the flank in a collar of silver lace so fine the jeweller swore it would snap on the first knock.

Nobody asked what it was for. The nephew turned it over under the lamp and said it looked like something a saint would keep locked up. I said it was for keeping. He laughed and paid in coins still warm from his pocket, then remarked that the gold leaf round the rim looked like a cage. I told him all good cages are gold, and he looked at me as though I had given him the wrong change.

Anyway. I'm enclosing the last shaving, the one that refused to curl, so you can keep it in your Bible. Come at Easter if the road holds. The tin stars on my sign have come loose again, and the wind keeps trying to carry them off to Shrewsbury. Your loving brother, Ned.