Black and grey dotwork mandala with a crescent moon face and dangling dot chains and drops, tattooed on a lower leg.

Crescent moon mandala with dotwork on calf

Dotwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon with a sleeping face sits inside a layered mandala of petals and scrollwork. Below it, strings of dots and teardrop and diamond shapes hang in a chain, with the shading built from stippled dots and fine lines. The design is in black ink on grey skin and is centred on the calf against a pale concrete background.

Dotwork Geometric Other Moon Crescent moon Face Mandala Dot Chain Teardrop Diamond

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewe had been at it since midnight, and by half two the lamb was still coming backwards, one white foot showing like a peg in the lantern light. Dad was in Carlisle with the lorry and his phone went to voicemail twice, so it was me, the vet's number on a Post-it stuck to the feed bin, and Gran's old torch with the orange tape round the handle.

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Gran used to say the moon over the top field slept on lambing nights so the rest of us wouldn't have to. I never believed her. But when I stepped out of the shed the sky was clear and furred with frost, and the moon hung low over the hedge with its face tipped down and its eyes shut, as if it had given up on being watched. Frost on the gate bars caught every speck of light, like the pricked dots Gran used to stitch along her tea towels, and the icicles on the byre gutter dripped and hung and caught it too.

I got my hand in, found the second leg, folded it forward the way the vet showed me on her video, and pulled with the push, not against it. The lamb slid out in a rush of steam and lay there like a dropped glove. I rubbed its ribs with straw until it sneezed, then sneezed again, and the ewe made that low talking sound she keeps for her own.

When I looked up, the moon had opened one eye. Only a sliver, the way you check whether someone is still awake. Then it shut again, and I went back to the straw with my fingers too cold to feel anything but the warm wet of the new one.