Neo-traditional tattoo of a hawkmoth with black and grey wings and an amber thorax, placed on the side of the ribs, with dotted trails and small crosses below.

Hawkmoth with amber thorax on the ribs

Neo-trad · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A large moth with outstretched black and grey wings sits across the side of the torso, with a glossy amber oval forming the thorax and a tapered, patterned abdomen. The wings use bold black outlines, banded shading and white highlights, while fine dotted lines and small crosses trail beneath the body. The amber tone is the only colour, set against a mostly monochrome design on pale skin, with a grey garment at the top edge of the frame.

Neo-trad Dotwork Ribs Moth Wing Dotted line Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, where the stove reaches, and mind the draught from the booking hall door. This is the winter the night mail stopped answering its lamps at Scarrow Halt, and the stationmaster sent for my father because he was the only man left who could read the signal wires by touch. Nobody else would climb the cutting after dark.

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On the third night a moth came in through the lamp room window, a hawkmoth as big as a man's palm, its wings banded black as coal smoke and its body glowing amber wherever the oil flame caught it. It settled on the ledge beside the levers and would not be shooed. Each night after that it walked the line, and in the morning the frost showed a trail of tiny crosses along the sleepers, dotted and wandering, like a timetable nobody had printed. Father swore the creature was taking the rails' measure.

Then came the night the mail came up the cutting with its headlamp dark. Father took his lantern and went up the bank, and the moth went ahead of him, a small gold coal drifting over the rails. It stopped above one place where a fishplate had sheared clean through, and it stayed there, glowing, until Father saw the break and threw the red lamp across the track. The driver heard the whistle and stopped with the engine's nose a yard short of the gap.

They never found the moth after that. Father said it had burned itself out on the lamp glass, though he never showed anyone the glass. But every winter a little cross of frost forms on the cutting wall where the line bends, and the mail runs to time. Now mind your cup, the last train's whistle is due, and I'm not walking up that bank without a light.