Colour tattoo of a moth with black lace wings, purple roses and blue forget-me-nots against a purple starry sky, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace moth with roses on a limb

Botanical · Other · Colour · Photo

A moth with black lace-patterned wings sits in front of a moon and a purple, star-speckled sky. Its wings are decorated with purple roses and small blue flowers, and its fuzzy green body holds a purple gem, with a blue feather beside it. The shading is smooth and soft, and the bold black lace contrasts with the bright purple and blue.

Botanical Neo-trad Other Moth Lace Rose Forget-me-not Feather Moon Star Gem Night sky

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mary Gall had been at the bobbins since the candle was lit, and the thread kept knotting at the one place it always knotted, by the pin her mother called Old Ned. Her mother used to say that thread which tangled like that wanted a rest, so Mary set the pillow aside and went to the window. The moon sat over the churchyard wall with half its face in shadow, and a moth the size of a hand was beating against the glass as if someone had sent it for her.

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It looked grey until the lamp caught it, and then it was black lace stretched over a night sky, with stars pricked into the edges. The moth did not speak, but Mary understood it well enough. The moon wanted a shawl to cover the bare patch at its rim, and the lacemaker in the village was the only one who could make it. She had only her mother's thread, bought with the last of the egg money. But she was a woman who finished what she started, so she sat down again.

She worked until the sky greyed. Each time she crossed a pair of bobbins, a purple rose opened in the mesh, and at the hem small blue flowers came up, forget-me-nots from the ditch by the mill, the ones her father had brought her before his ship went down off the Ness. When the last pin was out she tied off the thread and the moth lifted from the sill, flew over the roofs, and settled on the moon's shoulder as though it had always belonged there. A single blue feather lay on the sill where it had been. Her mother came down at sunrise and found the spool full again, and said nothing at all.