Black and grey traditional tattoo of a tiger head with a cigarette and a curling smoke line, on a section of skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tiger head with cigarette

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A bold tiger head faces forward with stripes and dotted shading on the forehead and cheek. Solid black outlines and heavy black fills contrast with stippled grey shading around the muzzle and ears. The cigarette is held in the mouth, with a scrolled line of smoke curling beside it on a plain skin background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost came early to Lower Scarrow that year, and the tiger came with it, sitting on the top gatepost as though it had paid the rent on the place. Tam Velley saw it first from the lambing shed, a striped head with its ears pinned back and a thread of smoke going straight up into the still air.

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It would not eat the mash he left out. It would not drink from the bucket. It went into the shed, lay down beside the coal stove, took a cigarette from the tin on the shelf, lit it from the glowing bars, and smoked with its eyes half shut while the ewes steamed around it. Tam's wife, Bet, said a beast like that was a bad sign. Tam said it had not yet knocked over a lamp, so he would reserve his judgement.

Then the snow shut the lane for nine days. The ewes went down one by one in the drifts, and Tam was too tired to lift them. On the ninth night the tiger got up, stretched, and spoke in a voice like gravel shifting in a bucket. It wanted the rest of the tobacco and the loan of the sledge. Tam gave it both without a word.

By morning the sledge was gone, the tin was empty, and every ewe was on her feet with a lamb tucked under her. Across the white field ran a line of paw prints, neat as stitches, heading for the hills. Beside the gate a single curl of smoke still hung in the air, then drifted off the way the tiger had.

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