Wolf head on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf's head in three-quarter profile faces left, with a detailed eye, pointed ears and soft fur strokes that fade into the skin. The shading is black and grey, with smooth tonal gradients on the muzzle and softer, feathered brushlike marks trailing down from the neck. The tattoo fills most of the frame against a blurred indoor background, with only the person's back and shoulder visible.

Realism Back Wolf Head Eye Fur

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, before the soup goes cold and your Aunt Berta finishes the sherry. I'll be quick. This was the summer the Halloran boy married the miller's girl up in the high valley, and the whole parish was dancing in the barn when the grey wolf came up the lane out of the pines. He didn't hurry. He walked the way a magistrate walks into a room where everyone already knows what he's going to say.

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The fiddler saw him first and stopped mid-reel, and the stopping spread through the barn like a draught under a door. Nobody screamed. My grandmother always said that was the strangest part. The wolf halted at the gate, turned his great head, and looked straight at the bride. His eye was the colour of weak tea held up to a candle, and he kept it on her, steady, the way you'd wait for a child to own up to a broken jug.

Then Mairi, the bride, did a foolish and brave thing. She walked out through the gate in her white dress with the wet grass soaking her hem, untied the blue ribbon from her plait, and held it out on her open palm. The wolf took it, delicately, as if it were a communion wafer, and stepped back into the dark. The fur along his neck lifted and fell like smoke going back into the trees. Nobody saw him go. Only the ribbon was missing.

So that's why the Hallorans tie a ribbon to the gatepost at every wedding still. Now, somebody find the fiddler a drink. He's earned it, and it's his turn to be frightened.