Black and grey dotwork tattoo of two wolf-like creatures locked together in a circular frame on the upper arm.

Two wolf-like creatures entwined on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo shows two wolf-like creatures with pointed ears and flowing manes, locked together inside a rounded outline. Heavy solid black fill sits on the fur and ears, while stippled dotwork shading creates the lighter tones and the background frame, with thin white highlights on the claws and muzzles. The design fills a broad circular area across the outer upper arm against plain skin.

Blackwork Dotwork Upper arm Wolf Creature Circle Fur Claw

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wolves had been circling the frozen tarn for three nights before Agnes Holt thought to count them. There were two, one grey-black and one darker, and they never came closer than the width of the reed beds. Her brother said they were hunting. Agnes had seen hunting wolves, and these were not hunting. They walked the same slow line around the water, heads low, as if they were carrying something between them that neither would put down.

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On the fourth night the snow stopped and the moon came out flat and white over the fells. Agnes took the lantern and walked down past the sheepfold and the broken gate until she could see the ice. The dark one had its jaw locked on the ruff of the other, and the other had its paw planted hard on the dark one's chest. Neither moved. Their breath hung above them in two separate clouds that slowly became one.

She sat on the frozen stone wall and waited, because her grandmother had told her that the wolves of the tarn were two brothers who quarrelled over a single bone in a hard winter and were made to keep it forever. Near dawn the grey one loosened its grip. The dark one pulled back, and for a moment they both stood apart and looked at her with the same yellow eyes. Then they turned and went round the water again, closer now, shoulder to shoulder, and the ice held their prints until the thaw.