Three small black paw print tattoos in a diagonal trail across the ribs, in a simple solid style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three paw prints on a ribcage

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Three solid black paw prints, each with a main pad and four toe pads, are arranged in a diagonal trail running down the side of the ribcage. The filled shapes have soft, slightly textured edges and no shading or outline detail. The skin is pale and the background is dark, which makes the black ink stand out clearly.

Fine line Ribs Paw print Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top has faded to the colour of weak tea, and the canvas sags over the sawdust like an old horse's back. You count the crates in the lorry yard for the third time since breakfast, because counting is easier than telling Mr Pell that the Hollis brothers have taken the last good trapeze rigging to settle the coal bill. Behind the caravans, Juno is nosing at the bin lids. She is a grey lurcher with one ear folded inside out, and she is the only thing left in the field that still answers to a whistle.

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On the last night of the season the frost comes early and hard. You are checking the stable bolts when you notice the gate is open and the rope lies coiled on the straw, neat as a hangman's knot. Out past the ticket booth, in the silver crust of the field, there is a line of paw prints leading away towards the canal. Each print is sharp and dark where the frost has broken, and the trail runs in a slant down the lane as if she had been stepping lightly, certain of her route.

You follow with the storm lantern while Pell calls after you that she will come back for her supper, same as she always does. You don't argue. The prints end at the towpath, beside the empty elephant house where the old keeper once slept with his boots on. Juno is not there. There is only a single print pressed deeper than the rest, and then, going the other way, a second trail heading back up the lane toward the lights of the yard.

By morning the frost has taken the outward prints, but the ones coming home stay sharp in the mud beside the gate. Pell, who has never once believed in omens, leaves the lantern burning on the post all day, and every so often he looks down the lane as though someone might still be walking up it.