Tribal dragon design in black ink
Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash
A bold black ink drawing of a dragon with a horned head turned to the left, a spined neck and a long, curving tail. The design is built from solid black shapes and thin white cut-out lines, with dotted detailing along the wing edges. It is shown in plain black on a white background with no colour or shading.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Tom,
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You will not believe the wedding. Your cousin Alys insisted the old dragon from the Mary Ellen go up on the quay, the one your grandfather carved from a split ash beam the winter before the war. Nobody had looked at it properly in years. It had gone grey and the paint had lifted off the horns, but Alys sanded the spines back by hand the week before and oiled the whole length of the tail until it shone like wet slate.
The vicar wanted it moved for the photographs, and Jack Penhale wanted it moved so the lifeboat crew could get past, but the bride stood her ground. So we propped it on two trestles by the slipway, its head turned out over the water as if it were watching for the boats coming in.
Then the wind came round off the headland, the way it does at four o'clock every August, and the long tail began to lift. I watched the dotted edges of the wings catch the light, all those little notches your grandfather cut with a bradawl, and I thought he would have laughed to see it.
Alys saw me crying and pretended it was the salt. Afterwards she pressed a folded paper into my hand. It was a drawing of the same dragon in ink, with a note on the back in her careful hand: For the one who held the chisel. I have pinned it above the kettle. Come home at Christmas and see it.
Love, Mum
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