Black ink drawing of a crescent moon filled with mandala and paisley patterns, with a lotus flower and a dotted flower beside a vertical ornamental dagger motif.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon with mandala and lotus design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing on white paper of a crescent moon, its curved edge filled with dense mandala, paisley and floral ornament. A lotus flower sits at the upper left and a round dotted rosette at the lower left, with a vertical dagger-like motif running down the left side. The linework is fine and detailed in black ink, with stippled shading in places, and the open inner curve of the moon is left blank.

Botanical Dotwork Moon Crescent moon Mandala Paisley Lotus Flower Rosette Dagger Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Wren,

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We crossed the line on Tuesday and Mr Abernethy, the bosun, gave me a shave with seawater and a blunt razor, which is the only sort of barber the Caroline Vell carries. I have been keeping the chart-room lamp lit late because the moon has been so thin this month that I can barely find it above the horizon. When it finally shows, it looks as though someone has bitten a silver plate and left the rest for the gulls.

You asked in your last letter why I draw the moon with its middle left empty. I have been thinking about it ever since, watching the real one. Each night I fill the curve with patterns: lotus petals, little dotted rosettes, the paisley swirls Grandmother stitched into every tablecloth in the parlour. Then I leave the round inside of the crescent bare, because that is where the light falls, and a drawing should show where the light falls rather than the stone it is lit from.

Last night a squall came up off the Azores and the moon went behind it for three hours. I sat under the binnacle with my pen and found I could not draw the ornament without seeing the empty curve in my head, a pale hole in the page that the ink kept wanting to close. Mr Abernethy came down at four with a mug of cocoa and looked over my shoulder and said the blank bit was the only part that navigated. I did not argue with him.

Keep the empty part clear for me, Wren. I will fill in the rest when I am home.