Silver-toned dotted lines and a dark geometric band on a woman's thigh, with a small crescent moon tattoo on one finger, in a fine line and dotwork style.

Dotted lines and thigh bands

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in a white crochet top rests her hand on her thigh, showing several tattoos. Two curved rows of small dots sit on the outer thigh, appearing silver in tone, while a pair of dark brown geometric bands wrap the upper thigh. A small crescent moon is inked on one finger, and the shot is framed closely on the legs and hands.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Hand Dotted line Crescent moon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ysolde, the dye vats at Sidon have been quiet since the spring fleet sailed, and Master Ammon has taken to counting his coins twice before he eats. I am writing this by the light of the last oil in the lamp, because the moon is thin tonight and I want you to know what I have made.

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Remember the murex shells we cracked on the beach at midsummer? The purple stained my fingers brown for a week. Last month I learned to lay silver leaf over a bone stylus and press it into linen, so each point of light stands raised like a seed. I have pressed forty-one of them into a strip of cloth for you, two rows, curving the way the new moon sits in the sky when the caravans leave for the south. I hope the dots are fine enough that your eyes can take the count without blinking.

Ammon says a moon-cut band is bad luck for a traveller, since it promises a return that the gods rarely honour. I told him a promise is only bad when no one keeps it. So I have kept it. Every night since you walked out of the gate I have pressed one more dot onto the cloth, and tonight makes the thirty-first. The last row is nearly full.

The strip is folded in the box with the blue thread. Take it to the caravan master at Byblos; he owes me a favour, and he will not ask what the dots mean. When you reach the coast and the lamps are lit along the harbour wall, count them against the sky. If you find one more than I have made, it is mine, and you may keep it for the journey home.