Black and grey crescent moon tattoo with mandala-style patterns and hanging droplets on the back of the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon with mandala pattern on the neck

Dotwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon filled with intricate mandala-style patterns sits on the back of a person's neck, with the hair pulled to one side. A dotted line hangs from the lower curve of the moon, ending in several teardrop-shaped droplets. The fine linework and stippled dots are rendered in black ink with grey shading, set against plain skin and a blurred background.

Dotwork Fine line Neck Moon Crescent Mandala Droplet Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You reach Hollin Gap an hour before the moon clears the ridge, because your aunt Teodora always said a pass wants crossing in the dark half of the month, when the sky hands you its light in slices. Tonight there is only a paring of it, a silver nail hanging above the scree. Keep the mule on your left. The track is a ribbon of wet slate, and the seep from the overhang has been dripping since noon, each drop swelling at the lip of the rock before it lets go.

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Count them as you go. Teodora taught you that too. Beneath the moon's curve a line of iron pegs runs down the cliff, the same pegs a shepherd drove in before the war to string his lamp wire, and from the wire hang the little bells of meltwater, one after another, ringing faintly as they fall. At the seventh drop the path bends, and there is the cairn, its stones wrapped in lichen rings so neat they look drawn with a compass. Somebody spent a whole winter on that pattern. You have never learned who.

The mule stops and will not be coaxed. You sit on the cold flat rock beside the cairn and unwrap the bread, and while you eat you notice a tin wedged in a crack, its lid rusted into a crescent. Inside are slips of paper, dozens of them, each with a name and a date, and each name has a small hand-drawn circle beside it, scribbled as if to keep something from rolling away.

You take the stub of pencil from your coat and write yours, then draw the circle, then close the tin. When the moon finally clears the ridge it lights the far valley like a spilt bowl, and a last drop from the overhang lands cold on your wrist. You stand, lift the mule's rope, and walk down into the silver, counting nothing at all.