Black and grey illustration of a wolf head above a skull wearing a feather headdress, with a column of vertebrae below, drawn as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wolf and skull with feather headdress

Black and grey · Flash

A wolf's head sits above a human skull, which is shown with a feather headdress on one side and a column of vertebrae beneath it. The drawing uses fine hatched linework and soft shading in greys against a solid black background. The composition is a tight vertical portrait that fills the frame.

Wolf Skull Feather Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sexton of Hollin Fold died in October with nobody to dig for him, and by November the wind had worried his bones out of the chalk. Mira Vane, who kept the ferry, found a wolf sitting beside the skull on the landing stage, grey as the river and waiting.

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"You want a grave," Mira said. The wolf did not move. Her eyes were pale as the mist lying on the water. Mira fetched the spade from the boathouse and took the lantern, and the two of them walked the frozen path to the churchyard, the wolf keeping a yard behind, her breath smoking.

They dug beneath the old yew until the ground gave up its last warmth. Mira laid the skull in the hole. The wolf nudged at her sleeve, so Mira reached into her coat and drew out a grey goose feather she had kept since summer, and she set it on the brow of the skull. The wolf lowered her head to the earth and stayed there until the chapel bell rang six.

When Mira came back at first light with the loaves for the crossing, the wolf was gone. The sexton's small white bones lay in a neat line along the mound, spine-fashion, the way a baker sets out rolls to cool. Mira told no one in the village. She only began leaving a heel of bread on the grave each morning, and each morning it was gone.