Hello everyone! I hope you're all well. I'm in the early stages of making a seahorse for a laser inlay, and need to make a curly tail. I want to cut the black shape out of the red shape (see attached), in order to leave behind the pointy curly thing.

Whenever I try to run a Difference operation on it, doesn't let me, and the error bar isn't at all helpful! I'm sure this is a very basic thing I'm overlooking as a newbie to the software, but would greatly appreciate any help!

Version info:

Inkscape 1.1 (c68e22c387, 2021-05-23)

If that´s your goal it´s just select both shapes and go Path->Difference - done:

This makes it maybe a bit clearer:

I used the wrong selection thingy, I used the path editing one! Thank you <3 

In case anyone's curious 

Cute.

It should work the same way with the node-tool: