Bold black tribal-style dragon tattoo across the upper back of a woman holding two katana swords, placed on the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal dragon across a woman's back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large black dragon with outstretched wings spans the centre of a bare back, drawn with thick, bold tribal-style outlines and solid black fill. The ink is a single dark tone, with no shading or colour, and the design curves from the shoulders down towards the waist. The subject faces away from the camera against a plain grey background, with two katana swords held at either side.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Pell and Sons Travelling Show had been losing towns since the mill closed at Sleaford, and by the fourth autumn there was only one thing left worth the sixpence at the gate. It was a black lacquered dragon carved from a single ash tree, hung on a pole between the blades of old Eli Crane, who had once been the finest knife-thrower in the north and could barely lift his arms anymore.

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Every evening Eli stood at the back of the ring with a sword in each hand, and the lamps went down. The dragon's wings were cut so thin they seemed to hum in the draught. Children stopped chewing their toffee. Farmers who had come to scoff stayed on to watch the wings tremble, and nobody asked why the dragon never turned its head to face them.

On the last night of the season, a stranger in a grey coat came to the gate with no money and asked to see the dragon. Ada Pell said the show was closed. He said he had carved those wings himself, sixty years back, and left them with the ash because the tree had been his father's. Ada let him in out of the rain.

He walked to the pole and looked at the dragon's face for a long time. Then he laid one blade flat against its spine. The lacquer cracked along the line like ice on a puddle, and beneath it the wood was pale and clean. The dragon lifted its head, and the whole tent went quiet. Eli Crane sat down in the sawdust and laughed until he wept, and by morning the show had packed up and gone to find another town.

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