Black ink mandala design with a crescent moon, stars, snowy mountains and a pine forest inside a sunburst border, drawn on a beige background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala with mountains, pines and night sky

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A circular mandala design with a sunburst outer ring of pointed, dotted petals and inner bands of scrollwork. Within the circle, a night sky with a crescent moon and stars sits above snow-capped mountains, a band of pine trees and a winding river. The drawing uses fine black linework, stippling and hatching on a plain beige background, with the design centred in the frame.

Geometric Dotwork Mandala Mountain Pine tree Forest Moon Star Night sky River Sunburst

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your grandfather carved the first of these circles into a tin lid before he had the sense to draw one on paper, so sit closer and mind the candle. The river in it is the Lenn, and it runs down from the Sorrow Shoulders, where the snow never quite gives up, and it winds past the pines because the pines are too stubborn to move for anybody.

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There was a girl called Ysolde Parr who lived at the bottom of that valley with one goat and a debt she did not understand. One night the moon sagged so low over the ridge that its horns caught in the top branches of the tallest fir, and there it hung, sulking like a cat stuck in a hedge. She climbed the pines in her stockings, as you do when you are nine and cross, and she sang at it the rude songs the carters taught her, until the moon laughed and shook itself loose.

But the stars had come down to watch, and when the moon went free they all swarmed after it and tangled themselves in her hair. She walked home under a crown of them, and the priest, who did not believe a word, took one look at her and bolted the door. The goat believed her, though, and that is why no one in the valley has ever managed to count the stars properly.

So when you see the Lenn shine silver in the dark, know it is only the stars going home by the back way, slipping down the water because they have never once paid the toll at the bridge. Now blow that candle out before your grandfather wakes and wants his lid back.