Black ink blackletter letter M on the top of a foot, with a scatter of small stars and dots trailing to the right.

Blackletter M with stars on the foot

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a tattoo on the top of a bare foot, with red toenail polish and a plain pale background. The bold blackletter-style letter M is filled in solid black, with a trail of small star shapes, dots and a tiny crescent fanning out to the right. The ink is black and grey, and the lettering sits centrally across the foot with the design taking up a small area.

Lettering Other Star Dot Crescent moon Script

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The night the water ran out at Hollin Wells, Tamsin Ferrow walked the Ninth Road with a lamp in one hand and a tin cup in the other. Her grandmother had always said the sky would show you the way if you were foolish enough to keep looking up, and Tamsin had never been sensible.

Keep reading

The old well had a mark cut into its stone, a tall black letter M with a loose scatter of pits fanning out beside it. The children of the caravan towns called the pits stars and said the letter had been cut by a woman who could not sleep. Under it, the crescent of the moon hung low and thin as a paring knife, barely enough to see the sand by.

She found the salt cart in a dry wash a mile past the well. Its driver, a quiet man named Osei, was asleep against a wheel with the reins still wound round his wrist. He had been steering by the stars instead of the ruts, and the stars had led him into the wash. She woke him gently, gave him the cup, and sat with him until the crescent slipped under the edge of the world.

At first light she showed him the stone, and the shadow the letter threw westward across the flats, pointing like a finger. "Follow the M," she told him, "and keep the stars on your right." He laughed and said that was no kind of map. But he went, and the cart reached the coast two days later with its salt dry and its driver alive, and the story of the woman with the lamp went down the road with every caravan that passed the well.