Black and grey moon with a dotwork crescent shadow on the inner upper arm, with a small galaxy ring and Genesis reference inset below.

Moon and crescent shadow on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded, black and grey moon with a starburst pattern sits on the inner upper arm, with a solid black crescent behind it that fades into fine dotwork stippling. An inset photo below shows a small circular ring with a speckled galaxy colour, enclosing the script words genesis 12:2. The main piece uses soft grey shading and dense dots, while the inset adds colour ink.

Dotwork Realism Upper arm Moon Crescent Star Galaxy Script Circle Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags had counted the locks from Braunston to Napton twice before the moon came up over the cutting, and by then the crescent was already a thin white paring above the poplars. Her father steered from the back deck with one hand on the tiller and the other holding a flask he had not offered her. The barge was called Second Wind, which he said was a joke about the engine, though she had never seen him laugh at it.

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They tied up below Calcutt at half past nine. The water was flat and black and the stars lay in it so thickly that she could not tell which were reflections and which were up there. Her father sat on the gunwale and told her about the night his own father had sold the horse, the orchard, and the rights to a fishing stretch on the Trent, all to buy a boat that would never make him rich. "Make you great, the book says," he muttered. "Didn't say how long you'd have to wait for it."

She went down to the cabin and found the old almanac with its yellowed page for the month. Someone, her grandmother probably, had pencilled a ring round the new moon and written beside it: a blessing, not a promise. Mags sat with that for a long time. When she came back up, the crescent had gone behind a bank of cloud, and only a faint dusting of light marked where it was, like frost on glass.

Her father had fallen asleep against the tiller. She took it gently from his hand and held the boat steady in the still water until the moon came out again, thin and certain, and the stars shook themselves back into the canal.