Black tribal tattoo of a stylised animal with a curled head and flowing tail on the upper arm and shoulder.

Tribal animal tattoo on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tribal design of a stylised animal, shown with a curled head and flowing, flame-like shapes along its body and legs. The thick solid linework uses sweeping curves and sharp points, with no shading or colour. The design wraps over the outer upper arm against a plain dark top, with the skin lit evenly.

Upper arm Shoulder Animal Tribal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ice had come down the beck overnight, and by the time you reached the gate the whole valley was grey glass under a sky the colour of pewter. Your father's bull stood in the corner by the hawthorn, where he had no business to be. Nobody had let him out. The latch was still hooked, and the snow under the bars was unmarked except for your own boots coming up from the yard.

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He was not grazing. He stood with his head bent round and up, one horn curled back over his shoulder like a question, and where his legs met the frost there was something like fire, though nothing burned. You had seen him all summer leaning on the byre door, shoulders heavy as a bale, mild as milk. This was not that animal. Each flame along his flank was sharp as flint, and the hair stood up from his spine in black spikes that cast no shadow on the white.

Your grandmother used to say the old beasts walked the fields in winter to see who was still keeping the lamps lit. You had laughed at her. You did not laugh now. You fetched the fork from the shed and crossed the field slowly, the way you would approach any bull, and when you were close enough to smell his breath, which smelled of cut hay and cold iron, he lowered his head and pushed it once against your chest, gentle as a sheepdog's nose.

He turned, unhurried, and went down the slope towards the broken wall. Where his hooves struck the snow, the crust did not melt but gave a small ring of dark, like ink taking to paper. At the wall he stopped and looked back, and you understood he had not come to be fed. You went to the byre and found the gate standing open and the straw swept clean, and on the boards by the door a single curl of black, the shape of a horn, pressed into the wood as though someone had drawn it there with a burnt stick.