Watercolour style design of three howling wolves with rainbow smoke swirling above them, drawn on a white background with no body placement shown.

Three howling wolves with rainbow swirls

Mixed · Flash

The drawing shows three wolves with heads raised and mouths open in a howl, stacked in a loose triangle. Black ink lines define the fur and muzzles, while loose washes of colour fill the bodies and flow upward. Long ribbons of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple curl above the wolves, and the sketch sits on a plain white background.

Wolf Howling Rainbow Smoke Swirl Design

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the range and mind the coal dust on that settle, it never shifts. My grandfather told this one at the Tuesday club, and he had it from a man who worked the Lowmoor drift the winter the whistle cracked. Every night at shift change three grey wolves came down off the tip and sat in a row at the pit gate, and they howled until the men came up.

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The gaffer wanted them shot. The deputy, Jack Tennant, said a pit that had lost its whistle would take the wolves for its warning, so he went up the spoil heap alone with a lamp and a tin of sheep fat. He found them sitting with their muzzles lifted, and the smoke from the stack had gone wrong that night, twisting up in ribbons, red and then yellow and then a green that caught the lamplight. Jack said it looked as if the air had been dyed by someone who'd never been told where the colours stopped.

He stayed with them until the cage came up. Then he did a thing none of the men would own to afterwards. He howled back, badly, the way a man sings in chapel when he doesn't know the words. The wolves turned their heads together, the ribbons above them went blue, then purple, and the whole line of men at the gate heard the tip answer from three throats at once.

Jack came down with coal in his hair and never spoke of it again. The whistle was mended by Easter. But on still nights, if you stand at the top of the tip and listen, there's a sound like someone finishing a hymn they forgot the start of. That's all there is to it, and the kettle's boiled, so pass me your cup.