Black and grey crescent moon tattoo with a mandala and dangling beads sitting behind a person's ear on the neck.

Crescent moon with mandala behind the ear

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon filled with a mandala ornament, scrolls and a lotus-like motif is tattooed behind the ear. Beaded strands and small diamond-shaped drops hang from the lower edge of the moon onto the neck. The work uses dark outlines with grey shading and no colour, and a silver ear cuff and a hand with red nail polish are visible in the frame.

Neck Crescent moon Moon Mandala Lotus Swirl Bead Drop Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the wind up here steals the good parts. Hold your bowl with both hands, that tea came up from the valley and it is cooling faster than my patience. Look at the moon sitting in the notch of the pass. My grandmother's grandmother swore it was a bowl cracked and mended so many times it no longer holds water, only light, and that every caravan crossing after dark carries a little of that light home in its beads.

Keep reading

There was a bead-seller called Pema who worked by a lamp on the north side of the pass. She strung carved seeds and small brass drops on thread, and she made one piece she would never sell. It was a crescent of black silk, stitched with a lotus at its heart and curling scrolls along its edge, and from its lower curve she hung strands of beads that ended in little diamonds of tin. Her father called it a lie, and Pema said a good lie kept the cold off the teller too.

One night a mule-driver named Sonam came over the pass asking to borrow it for his daughter's wedding. He swore his salt was honest salt, not the grey stuff mixed with ash, and Pema watched the lotus on the silk close like a fist as he said it. She did not scold him. She only shook the strands so the drops clinked, and asked him to say it again, slower. The lotus stayed shut. Sonam sat down on the stones and told her about the ash, the lost loads, the three villages that had turned him away.

When he finished, the silk opened, petal by petal, and the drops rang like a hundred small bells. Pema gave him the moon for the wedding and never asked for it back. So if you hear chimes on this pass tonight, do not go looking for the bells. That is only the moon counting who has told the truth.