Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a campfire beneath three pine trees and stars inside a circle, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Campfire and pine trees in a night sky circle

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A campfire with stylised flames and logs sits beneath three pine trees, with a scatter of small stars and a larger four-pointed star above. The night sky is built from stippled dots that grow denser toward the edge of the circle, while the flames and trees use solid black fills. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on a close-up of the upper arm.

Dotwork Upper arm Campfire Flame Log Pine tree Star Night sky Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fire has sunk to embers by the time you climb back up from the spring, and the wind has swung round to the north, which means the pass will be cold before the moon clears the ridge. Hamish is already asleep under his oilcloth, one boot still laced, his tin cup upturned on a stone to keep the rain out. You kneel and feed the last split pine into the coals, blowing gently until the bark catches.

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Three trees stand black against the sky above the camp, the same three you counted the first evening when the surveyors came up from Glen Doran with their chains and their brass theodolite. Hamish said they were the only honest trees on the mountain, because they had nothing to hide from the weather. You doubted it then. Now the flames lean up past the logs in long pale tongues, and the stars come out thick over the col, more of them than you thought the sky could hold.

Somewhere below, a dog barks at a farm that is probably no longer there. You think about the letter in your pack addressed to a woman in Inverness, the one you have rewritten four times and still not sent. The surveyors leave at first light, and you will go with them down the far side, while the fire burns out alone on the pass as it has for every traveller who ever stopped there.

You lie down beside Hamish and pull the blanket over your shoulder. Before sleep takes you, you look once more at the big star above the ridge, steady as a lamp left in a window, and you decide the letter can wait until the valley, where there is a post office and a proper pen.