Traditional style tattoo on a calf showing a thatched cottage with a smoking chimney, a crescent moon, stars and a black lion beneath, with orange accents.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cottage, crescent moon and lion on a calf

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a scalloped-roof cottage with a chimney and a smoke cloud, a crescent moon with orange fill and small star marks in the sky, and a rampant lion at the base. Bold black outlines are used throughout, with grey shading and stippled dotwork in the clouds and lion. Orange fills the moon and the cottage windows and door, while the rest of the design is black and grey, and the two side-by-side photos show the same tattoo from slightly different angles.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Crescent moon Star Cloud Smoke Chimney Lion House

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The smoke has come up off Ardmore cottage again, Tom, piled over the roof like a wet fleece, and this time there was no wind to shift it. I stood at the gate with the paraffin can knocking against my knee and watched it climb until it caught on the crescent moon hanging above the chimney. Stars were pricked out all round it, sharp as a dressmaker's pins.

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The cottage has been empty since old Mr Lennox went across to the mainland for his hip. Its scalloped slates are still dark and tidy, and the two windows and the door glow orange, as if someone has left the lamps lit for a visitor who never comes. Down on the sea wall, where the tide licks the stones, the lion still stands on its hind legs, claws out, mane bristling. I have walked past it a hundred times and never once thought it looked hungry.

Last night I went in. The door was on the latch, the kettle was warm on the range, and two cups sat upside down on the draining board. Nobody was there, but the flagstones were wet in a line from the door to the back step, and there were prints in the damp, big and round, with long claw marks in front. They ran down the shingle and into the sea, and the smoke above me thinned out the way breath does on a cold morning.

I have not told anyone else. I have left the lamp burning in the window so the moon can find its way home. Come over on Thursday's boat, bring the good tea, and tell me honestly whether I have finally gone soft in the head out here.