Black and grey dotwork calf tattoos showing a moon, crystals, a cactus, an eye in an open hand and morel mushrooms, across both legs.

Calves with moon, hand and cactus tattoos

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two calves are covered in black and grey dotwork and engraved-style tattoos. The left leg shows a full moon, crystal clusters and a flowering cactus within dotted circles, while the right leg features a large open hand with an eye in the palm, a moth, an ouroboros, a star shape and morel mushrooms. Stippling and fine hatching build the shading, and the plain grey background keeps attention on the linework.

Dotwork Botanical Calf Moon Crystal Cactus Hand Eye Moth Mushroom Star Dotted circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Come closer, you who have walked up from the valley road, and mind the loose stone by the gate. Every spring my grandmother's grandmother would go out before dawn with a sack and a bent knife, and she would not let anyone follow. She said the morels only showed themselves to people who had already been told where to look, and the old woman who told her was a widow named Ysolde Penhallow who kept bees on the north slope.

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One April the moon hung so low over the orchard that the frost on the grass threw its light back up like a second moon. Ysolde was out there with her lantern turned down, kneeling beside a patch of ground where the prickly pears had spilled over the wall. She told the girl that the cactus was the only thing on the hill that would not be stolen by the weather, because it kept its water in its flesh and its needles in its skin. Crystals grew in the cracks of the old quarry above them, clear and point-sided, and Ysolde would bring down a handful each winter and set them on the windowsill to catch the sun.

The girl asked why she never picked the flowers. Ysolde laughed and said the flowers were for the moths, and the moths were for the dead, and the dead were for nobody's business but their own. Then she opened her palm and showed the girl the eye that had always been there, pale and patient, looking back at the moon. The girl never told anyone that she had seen it blink.

They found nine morels that night, and Ysolde gave the girl the biggest one. Walk home by the wall, she said, and do not count your steps. The girl did count them, and at forty-one she stopped, turned round, and saw the lantern still burning on the hill, with a small dark hand held up against it.