Small black fine line crescent moon with three five-pointed stars tattooed on a shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon and stars on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small crescent moon with a shaded, textured edge sits beside three tiny star outlines on pale skin. The linework is thin and dark, with the crescent's inner curve left open and the shading concentrated along its outer edge. The tattoo is placed near the top of the shoulder against a soft, blurred background, with the design occupying a small part of the frame.

Fine line Shoulder Moon Crescent Star

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire will only last another hour and I'll not tell this twice. You want the one about the moon that got snagged on Hob's Wood? Good. Then mind the edges of it, because that's where the trouble sits.

Keep reading

The moon used to hang full over Ashcombe every night, fat and bright as a cheese, and the woodcutter's wife said it was too bold, that it kept the owls awake and the badgers gossiping. So one winter she took her husband's thin notching saw and went up the hill past the last stile. She climbed the oak at the top, the one with the twisted limb, and she cut. Not the whole moon, mind. Just the rind of it, the outer curve where the shadow lies thick. What came away fell as dark silver into the bracken, and the crescent that was left hung there thin and open at its heart, which is why you can see straight through it on a clear night.

The three stars that had been crowding the cut edge scattered when the rind fell. One landed in the millpond and sulked there until spring. One caught in the hem of the wife's shawl and was carried home, where it still pricks the baize of the parlour cloth. The third, the smallest, lodged itself in the boy who carried water up the hill, and he never quite sat still again. Those are the three you can find if you look, though you'll need a clean sky and a steady hand.

So when you see a crescent, you'll know it's not whole, and mostly you'll know it's not mean. Someone trimmed it to fit. That's all a moon ever needs, a bit of trimming and somebody patient enough to notice the gap.