Colour tattoo of a grey wolf head with green leaves, two small white forest spirits and a banner quote, on the outer thigh.

Wolf head with forest spirits and banner on thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A grey wolf head with bared teeth and a pink mark on its brow is the central motif, framed by green leaves, teal wash and two small white forest spirits. Black-lined banners across the top and bottom carry the printed words "Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite". The design fills the thigh with a mix of soft shading on the fur and bold linework on the banners.

Neo-trad Botanical Thigh Wolf Leaves Banner Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire is the only warm thing left in this hall, and the wind has teeth tonight. You want the story of Lord Anselm's gate, and I'll tell it the way my grandmother told it to me, with the wolf still breathing.

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Anselm's huntsmen came up the valley in the first frost with horns and iron-shod dogs, and they cut down Harrow, the grey wolf who had kept the high pass for forty winters. They carried his head back to Greyhold on a pole and nailed it above the gatehouse, jaws open, the lord's men cheering below. The pale forest spirits, no bigger than lamp-moths, clicked their small heads in the bracken under the wall and said nothing at all, which was worse than any shouting.

For a month nothing happened. Then Wren, the cook's girl, found wet leaves stacked on the gate-step each dawn, oak and bramble and something silver-green she had no name for. Anselm laughed and had the bell rung every night so the wood would know who was master. One night the bell rang once and stopped, and in the morning the stone step was bare, the leaves had pushed up between the flags, and ivy was climbing the gatehouse as fast as a man could walk.

They say the lord went out to see for himself, and found the wolf's head lying in the moss at the foot of the wall, its eyes open, its fur combed clean. Anselm bent to lift it and his sleeve caught on a thorn. He never pulled free of that thorn, and the forest keeps his bell now, and it never rings. So when you hear a sound in the trees at night, you go round by the stream, and you leave your bread on a stone for the little ones. Mind the fire, child. The old wolf's teeth are still sharp.