Black and grey tattoo of a winged, horse-like dragon with a long tail, running across the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged dragon horse on the side of the body

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo shows a horse-like creature with a dragon head, a flowing mane and two large bat-like wings raised behind it. The body is drawn with fine hatching and soft grey shading, and the long tail curls down toward the bottom left of the frame. The creature sits diagonally across pale skin on the side of the body, with the wings extending toward the top edge of the photo.

Ribs Dragon Wing Tail Mane Creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The mare came down the ramp this morning with her tail coiled behind her like a rope somebody had forgotten to coil, and the whole dock went quiet. The inspectors had papers that called her a horse. The papers were not wrong about the hooves or the eyes, but nobody on Callow Station had seen a horse with a lizard's head and wings that folded to the length of a sail. Dr Ostrem read the manifest twice and then asked me whether she was livestock or evidence.

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I took the job anyway. The stable block on the lower ring has been empty since the grain ships stopped. She ran the first night round the spindle in the dark, and each time she reached the bend her wings rose behind her, black and stiff as old leather, the grey hatching along her flank catching the lamps so she looked cut from the shadow between them. The school children climbed the rail to watch. I told them she was a dragon who had agreed to wear a bridle.

Last week the ring lights were dimmed for maintenance, and I went down to check the bolts. She stood at the open shutter with her mane lifting in the draught, looking into the black where the stars are. I drew the shutter a hand's width without meaning to. She did not look back. She simply stepped through the gap, tail last, and her wings opened once into the dark like a pair of hands clapping, and then there was only the shutter and the stars.

I am writing from the bench beside her empty stall. The bridle still hangs on its hook. I have not told Ostrem yet. Some things are kinder as rumour on a station this small.