Black dotwork tattoo of a campfire with pine trees, a crescent moon and stars on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Campfire, pine trees and crescent moon on an arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a campfire of crossed logs at the base, with stylised flames and pine trees rising above it under a night sky. A crescent moon, asterisk-like stars and scattered dots fill the space above the trees. The flames and ground are shaded with stippled dots, while the trees, moon and logs use solid black lines and fills, and a small red tint appears near the fire. The design is centred on a single arm in a black and grey palette.

Dotwork Blackwork Upper arm Campfire Log Pine tree Crescent moon Star Night sky Flame Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit in, the lot of you, and mind the sparks. Frost has come down off the Carrick ridge tonight and the beasts are bedded in the low barn, so there's nothing left for us but to keep the fire honest. My gran laid this one the first winter after the flood took the bottom field, and she swore the logs had to go crossways like that, two over two, or the dark would come in under them.

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Now, the pines along the top wall were the Halloran boys, three brothers who climbed the hill after a lost ewe in the snow and never came down. The village says the trees grew from the spots where they stood. Every night the ewe's bell still rings up there, and the moon hangs over the ridge looking for their lamp. It's a sickle because it has been cutting its way through the cloud for a hundred years, trying to reach the valley, and it has never once got to the bottom of it.

So the eldest, Tam, struck a flint on the first cold night and built this fire, and he threw his sparks up at the sky. Each one hit the dark and stuck, and that's your stars. The dots you see between them are the sparks that missed, and they're still falling somewhere over Ballagan.

Tam never came home, but the fire came back every winter, because someone at this farm always remembered to lay it. Last year it was your mother, six years old and kneeling in the frost, who built it crossways without being told. So you'll keep it going tonight, and if that moon looks down, let it see the light.