Black and grey traditional tattoo of a wolf head on a dagger wrapped in banners reading FOR THOSE I LOVE I WILL SACRIFICE, on an arm.

Wolf head on a dagger with banner lettering

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf's head sits at the hilt of a dagger, with a scroll banner reading FOR at the top, THOSE I and LOVE across the blade, and I WILL SACRIFICE in lettering below the point. The bold outlines are filled with black and grey shading, with the wolf's face and the banner highlights left lighter against the skin. The design runs vertically down the limb against a dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer the fire, the peat wants feeding and so do you. No, you'll not hear the end before the middle, that's not how the Skerry folk tell it, and I'm not about to tell it their way. The winter the sea froze to the Skerry Gap, Ruth Anning had three children, one goat and a grey she-wolf nobody had invited in. The wolf came down off the hill with a torn flank and lay in the byre straw, watching the children the way a dog watches a shut door.

Keep reading

The pack came across the ice in the dark of the moon, drawn by the smell of that goat. Ruth stood in the doorway with her father's dagger, the one with the bone grip and the brass rings on the hilt, and she was shaking so hard the blade rang against the lintel. The wolf got up on three legs. She limped past Ruth's skirts, past the children, and out onto the white, and she barked at the pack until they turned from the byre and followed her.

From the window the children watched a grey shape running out over the ice, circling, leading them south towards the rocks where the ice was thinnest. Nobody in that house ever saw her come back. The sound came across the Gap a long while after, not a howl so much as a last word.

When the thaw came, they found the dagger in the straw, its grip chewed smooth, and scratched into the wall beside the hearth were the words 'for those I love'. Under them, in a smaller hand, 'I will sacrifice'. That's the whole of it. Mind the step going out, it's glass this time of year.

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