Both legs covered in traditional style tattoos on the thighs and calves, including a fox, a butterfly, a nutcracker and a mandala, with a plate of strawberries resting on the thighs.

Traditional leg sleeve with fox and nutcracker

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

Two legs, photographed from above while lying on a wooden floor, are covered from thigh to ankle in bold traditional tattoos. Motifs include a fox, a butterfly, a nutcracker, a mandala, a lantern, a candle, scissors and lettering on the left calf, outlined in black with solid red, green, yellow and blue fills. A white plate of strawberries sits across the upper thighs, and the colour ink dominates the composition.

Traditional Thigh Calf Fox Butterfly Mandala Lantern Candle Scissors Mushroom Flower Lettering Heart Mouse

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mouse had been nibbling the candle stubs for a week before Edith Marr noticed the nutcrackers were missing their teeth. She kept them on the top shelf of her workshop above Lantern Row, twelve soldiers in red coats, each carved from one block of lime wood and painted by hand. Now eleven stood to attention, and the twelfth lay face down in a drift of sawdust with its jaw cracked open.

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The fox arrived on the Tuesday, sitting on the windowsill as though he had paid the rent. He had a gentleman's manners and a gentleman's appetite. "Mice are a nuisance," he said, licking one paw. "Leave the door ajar tonight and I'll see to it." Edith had heard that sort of promise from her grandmother, who swore foxes never came to a henhouse without taking a hen, so she left him by the cold stove with a saucer of milk and kept her eye on the shelf.

She lit the candle at the bench near midnight and waited, the brass gears of the clock above her ticking slow. The mouse came out bold as a bailiff, its arms full of wax, and the fox crept along the skirting board with his tail low. Edith did not stop either of them. She sat quietly with a spool of red thread and stitched the fallen soldier's coat back together, one neat stitch at a time.

In the morning the fox was gone, and so was the saucer. On the shelf, all twelve soldiers stood straight, and beside the mouse hole lay a single clean scrap of red wool, bitten off close and left as a gift.