Fine line black tattoo of a crescent moon, five stars and a ribbon banner reading to the moon and back, on the upper back.

Crescent moon and stars with script banner

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black outline of a crescent moon sits in the centre, with a ribbon banner across it reading "to the moon and back" in script. Five small outlined stars and a few dots surround the moon on a pale, smooth patch of skin. The linework is clean and even with no shading, and the tattoo is centred in the frame against a plain background.

Fine line Lettering Back Crescent moon Star Banner Script Quote Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the lock at Hanbury has been against us three days running, so I am writing this on the cabin step with my boots off and the kettle going cold beside me. Your father says the water is high from the rain upriver, and the Ellen Mae will not clear the low bridge without losing her chimney, so we are tied up below the mill with the gulls for company.

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Last night the sky cleared after dark and I counted stars off the towpath until my neck ached. There was a moon, only a thin paring of one, hanging over the poplars like someone had caught a strip of bone-white ribbon on a branch. I thought of the card you pinned to the wheelhouse door before we left, the one with the silver crescent you cut out yourself with the good scissors, and I wished I had brought it along to hold up against the real thing.

Your father wanted to know why I was smiling at nothing. I told him I was thinking of the quarrel we had at Christmas, and how you said I go off on the barge the way the moon goes behind a cloud, always coming back but never on the day you'd marked on the calendar. He laughed and said it was the most sensible thing anyone had said to him all year.

Tell your mother the lock keeper swears Thursday, and I will be on the bank at Thursday's first light with the rope over my shoulder and a bag of your favourite barley sugars in my pocket. Keep the card on the door. I reckon this trip is only as far as Hanbury and back, but it is to the moon and back all the same, Nell, every single time.