Black and grey traditional style tattoo on a forearm showing a figure standing on a crescent moon beside clouds and a four-point star.

Figure on a crescent moon with clouds and stars

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A figure in a cap and tunic stands on the curve of a crescent moon, holding a long pole, with a cratered moon face and stippled shading. Solid outlines and cross-hatched cloud and shadow lines frame the design, with a four-point star to the upper left. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on a flat area of skin against a blurred background.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Moon Crescent moon Figure Cloud Star Sky

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The moon had started to tilt the year the last grain ship stopped coming up from the colonies, and by spring the crescent was thinning on its western side like bread left out in the damp. Mabry Coyle was sent up the long ladder at Cauldhaven with a hooked pole, a tin of sealant and a cap two sizes too big for her. Nobody told her the work would be lonely. Nobody needed to.

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Her task was simple to say and hard to do. The cloud that gathered on the moon's shoulder had to be swept back each night before it froze onto the rim, and the craters had to be kept clear of the grit that drifted down from the dish farms. She walked the curve with the pole across her shoulders like a yoke, the way her grandfather had walked the sheep bridge, and she counted the stars that still carried the old names. The four-pointed one over the north bank was Ada's Lamp. The two faint ones beside it were the twins, who never agreed about anything.

On the forty-first night the moon's face turned towards her and spoke in the voice of the tide tables. It asked why she kept sweeping the clouds away when they only wanted somewhere to rest. Mabry said the rim would crack. The moon said cracks were how light got in, and that it had been cracked since before the first ladder. She thought about that for a long time, leaning on the pole while the sea below rolled its grey shoulders.

She did not stop sweeping. She left one cloud by the eastern horn, a fat pale thing shaped like a sleeping dog, and called it her wage. Each dawn after that the grain ships could be found coming in by its shadow, and the girl in the oversized cap, who had long since grown into it, took the pole from Mabry without being asked.