Black tribal-style dragon design with sweeping spiked wings and a flowing tail, drawn on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal dragon design

Black and grey · Flash

A bold black dragon design shown in profile, with its head bent low and a large wing of sharp, sweeping spikes rising above it. The linework is solid and heavy, with tapering tribal-style blades and swirling inner detail filling the wings and body. The design is shown in pure black on white with no colour, and the tall, narrow composition ends in a long flowing tail.

Dragon Wing Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hettie,

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The snow has shut the Scarrow Gap again, so the carrier left the mail at the Red Ewe and I had to walk the last stretch myself. You will laugh at me. I went the long way round by the old quarry, and that is where I saw the thing you would not believe.

It was lying along a shelf of rock above the road, its head bent so low that its chin rested on the stones, as if it were listening for the carts. Its wings were not wings so much as a fan of black blades, sharp as the flint we dig, and they swept up behind it like the spines of a storm. Where its body curled, the scales had been cut into patterns, swirls and hooks, so that I could read the mountain's weather written along it. It did not move. I did not run, which still surprises me.

Old Tamsin at the inn says the dragon has been bent that way since her grandmother's time, guarding the gap against anyone foolish enough to take the road in winter. She says that if it ever lifts its head, the pass will open. I told her that was a fine tale for the fire and nothing more. But this morning the wind came down the gorge and the long tail of it lifted off the rock, streaming out like smoke, and the snow slid off the road in one clean stripe.

I have the road cleared to the top now. I am sending this with the carrier, who has promised not to tell Tamsin I was frightened. Tell Father the ewes are fine and to keep the lamp lit in the byre. I will be home by Saturday, and I will bring you a slate with its shape scratched on it, if my hands will do it.