Black and grey death's head moth tattoo with a skull on its thorax, framed by two lines of black lettering on the thigh.

Death's head moth with quote on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey death's head moth with a skull marking on its thorax sits at the centre of the design, wings spread wide. Shaded greys give the wings and body depth, with soft reddish skin tones around the edges. Two lines of black lettering arc above and below the moth, reading 'It rubs the lotion on its skin' and 'Or else it gets the hose again'.

Lettering Realism Thigh Moth Skull Lettering Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every winter the frost came down on Hollin Farm the way it always did, and the old ewes huddled in the barn with their breath smoking. Mrs Abbot kept a lamp burning in the dairy because the cream would not set in the cold, and because she had seen the moth before. It came in the second week of January, when the snow lay thick on the midden and nothing green was left in the hedges.

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She knew it by the grey skull set in the fur across its back, the same mark that had made her mother cross herself when a moth like it landed on the kitchen sill the winter her father died. Her husband Tom said moths were only moths. He said it from the bed, half asleep, and so she sat up with the lamp and watched the thing walk slowly over the churn lid, turning its wings the colour of old ash.

It did not touch the cream. It did not touch the bread or the salt pork. It only walked the rafters and waited, and each night it moved a little closer to the hook where Tom hung his good coat. Mrs Abbot took it out to the snow in a jar and set it down by the gate, and by morning it was back on the lintel, wings folded tight, as if it had never been away.

In March the thaw came early. Tom did not come down to breakfast, and the coat was gone from its hook. Mrs Abbot opened the dairy door to let the light in and found the moth on the sill, its skull mark pale in the sun. She did not shoo it. She only poured the cream into the pail, left the lid off, and went to see to the ewes.