Realism tattoo on the outer thigh showing a bearded man's face framed by a wolf's head, with dotwork shading, leafy branches and a green wash.

Wolf and portrait on a thigh

Realism · Other · Mixed · Photo

A realistic portrait of a bearded man's face sits beneath a wolf's head, with leafy branches curling up the left side. The portrait and wolf are rendered in fine black linework with soft grey shading and dotwork stippling. A green wash runs behind the lower face, and a small black symbol sits below it.

Realism Dotwork Botanical Other Portrait Man Beard Wolf Leaves Branch Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow came early that year, and my uncle Teodor would not wait for the mule men. He laced his boots with the red cord, took the lantern and the coil of rope, and went up the Sallen road alone, saying he knew the pass better than any wolf. I watched the lamp climb until the cloud swallowed it.

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Three nights later the grey she-wolf came down to our fold, thin as a rake, and sat in the gateway looking at me the way Teodor used to look at a bad bargain. Her left ear was torn. I knew that ear. He had spent a whole winter leaving scraps behind the byre and swearing he did not.

I followed her up with the horn and a stub of tallow. Frost had silvered the rowan clinging to the rock below the cairn, and beyond it the glacier glowed the colour of old bottle glass. I found him sitting against a boulder, his beard white with rime, one hand flat on the wolf's ruff as if he were the one being kept warm. He said, 'She wants her name back before I go.' I did not understand until I saw the mark scratched into the stone beside him, the forked sign our grandmother drew over doorways to keep the passes open.

We carried him down between us, the wolf walking ahead with her head low. At the gate she stopped, looked back once, and went into the trees. I still keep his lantern. Each night I trim the wick and leave the door open an inch, in case someone out there is looking for the way home.