Black and grey forearm tattoo of a leafless tree in front of a full moon, with birds in the sky and dark posts above still water.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Leafless tree and full moon on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bare tree with dense, spreading branches fills the upper forearm in front of a pale full moon, with small birds flying across the top right. Below, dark posts and a railing stand beside still water that reflects the tree. Fine shading and solid black areas give the scene depth, and the photograph is taken straight on against a grey wooden floor.

Blackwork Realism Forearm Tree Moon Bird Water Reflection Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Coldharbour Row fished the old pit pond after dark, though the water was clear enough to read a hymn sheet through. Ada Penrose went down anyway the night her brother Tom failed to come up the lane from the shift. She carried a lantern, a heel of bread wrapped in a handkerchief, and the iron key to the railed gate that had been locked since the colliery closed.

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The pond lay under a full moon with the ash tree standing over it, every branch bare, the birds going over in a loose black string. Between the posts the water was so still that the tree stood in it twice, once in the air and once below, and Ada could not tell which one her lantern was lighting. She set the bread on the gatepost, as her grandmother had taught her, and said the names of everyone the pit had taken. The list was long, and the moon did not move while she said it.

When she reached Tom's name the water shivered, though no wind came off the spoil heaps. A figure rose in the reflection, half a man, standing waist deep among the posts with his cap in his hands. It was not Tom. It was the boy who had gone down the Maddock shaft in 1911 and never been dug out, and he looked at Ada the way a boy looks at a window he cannot climb through.

She put the key in the lock and turned it. The gate swung open with a sound like a bucket set down. Ada walked out along the railing with the lantern held low, and behind her the water went still again, and the birds came down one by one to the bare branches, as if someone had finally let them rest.