Black and grey tattoo of a winged bat with outstretched wings and a crescent moon above it, on the upper back near the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bat and crescent moon on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bat with outstretched wings sits across the upper back, with a crescent moon placed above it near the nape of the neck. The wing membranes are rendered in solid black with fine white veining, and the bat's body is shaded with stippled texture. The black and white photograph is taken from behind, with a soft blurred background.

Back Bat Crescent moon Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the bat came back to the church tower on Tuesday, the big one with wings like wet slate and the thin pale ribs running through them. Mr Ashby says it is the same bat that roosted in the lych gate every summer when we were girls, and I have decided to believe him, because it saves me from thinking about how old a bat can get. I left the vestry door open for it, as you always said to, and it went straight up past the bell rope without touching a thing.

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Since you left, the forest has crept closer. The path past the mill is hardly a path now, and Pim Dawes went in after his dog on Sunday and came back with his boots full of water and no dog, only a scrap of its collar snagged on a holly branch. Nobody goes past the stile after dark. I go, though, with the lantern, because someone has to count the ewes in the top field and Father's knees are no good for it any more.

Last night the moon was a paring, low over the beeches, and the bat came down to the stile and sat there folded up like a broken umbrella. I held the lantern out to it and it did not fly off. It only turned its head, slowly, and I thought of what you said at the last fair, that the old ones were never frightened of the dark, only of being forgotten by it. I said good night to it out loud, like a fool. It opened its wings and was over the hedge before I had finished the word.

Come home at Michaelmas if you can. The mill wheel has stopped and I want someone to tell me it is only the damp.

Love, Nell