Three-view photo of a colour realism tattoo of a castle under a crescent moon and starry sky, covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Castle under a crescent moon on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a castle with tall pointed turrets and glowing lit windows set on dark rocky ground, beneath a large crescent moon and a sky filled with stars and wispy clouds. Two bat silhouettes fly across the upper right of the design. Smooth blended shading gives the stonework and night sky depth, with blues dominating and warm yellow and orange tones in the windows.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Castle Crescent moon Star Night sky Cloud Bat Window

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now stop your fidgeting and mind the fiddler, because I have not finished with the castle on the hill. You can see it from the car park when the cloud lets you, the grey pile with three spires like sharpened pencils. Every dance night for sixty years the north tower has lit up at half past nine, and every year somebody's grandfather swears he saw bats come off the battlements and wheel over the water meadows.

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Old Mrs Abernethy ran this hall before the war, and she used to say that Gideon Pryce, the miller's son, climbed that hill in 1931 with a borrowed fiddle and a bet in his pocket. He was to play one tune under the castle windows and be back before the moon was a fingernail. The stone was cold, he told her afterwards, and the sky so thick with stars you could hear them ticking. He played. The windows opened one by one, warm gold as toffee, and a woman's voice asked him in for a reel.

He never came down. The milk-cart men swore the bats kept the lane clear all winter, and the north tower kept its lamp burning for him. Then each spring the fiddle turned up on the hook behind this very bar, strings freshly tuned, with a dance card tucked in the case. The names on it were all ones nobody here had heard, and the last line was written in a hand Mrs Abernethy swore was her own, dated for tonight.

So when the moon goes thin like that, you dance with whoever's nearest and you do not look out of the window. Dorothy, play the waltz. No, love, I'm not having a go at you. Just keep your eyes on your partner and your feet on the boards.