Black fine line crescent moon tattoo with a feather, arrow and stars on the upper back, in a dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon and feather on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical composition on the upper back shows a crescent moon with fine swirling ornament along its edge, sitting beside an open circle with a dotted central line. An arrow and a small cluster of stars sit above, and a feather with a diamond below. The linework is fine and partly stippled, rendered entirely in black ink with no greys or colour.

Fine line Dotwork Geometric Back Crescent moon Moon Feather Arrow Star Circle Diamond Dotted line Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cart came down off the moor on the morning of the wedding with the new moon still pale above the ridge, and Old Tamsin said that was the sign they had been waiting for. The groom, Edwin Harrow, had walked the boundary stones three nights running, laying a single grey feather on each one so the stones would know he meant to keep his word. Nobody in Lowcombe had ever seen a man do such a thing, and nobody could say whether it was luck or foolishness.

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At the church gate the bride was waiting beside a brass hoop from her grandmother's loom, as wide as a cartwheel. She had worked a crescent of silver thread around its rim, curling it in the old swirls the women used to keep off the wet. When Edwin asked her why the moon, she said the moon was the one thing that always came back after going dark, and that was the only promise she trusted.

The vicar, who did not hold with old customs, read the service quickly. But when it came to the vows, the arrow her brother had carved above the lintel caught the sun, and the stars painted along the beam seemed to catch it too. Tamsin swore afterwards that a line of light ran straight down from the arrow to the feather in Edwin's coat, though she was half blind by then and had been drinking the elderflower cordial.

They kept that feather in a tin box under the bed for fifty years. When the widow Harrow finally opened it, the boundary stones had been worn smooth by feet and weather, and the silver moon on the hoop still shone. She laid the feather on the sill where the morning light could find it, then went down to see who was knocking at the door.