Black and grey fine line tattoo of seven moon phases in a vertical row on the forearm, close to the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phases down the forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Seven circles in a vertical line show the phases of the moon, from a thin crescent at the top to a fully shaded disc near the middle, then tapering back to a thin crescent at the bottom. The phases are rendered in grey shading with soft, graduated tone, and the lit and unlit parts of each moon are clearly separated. The design sits on a pale forearm against a dim, blurred background, with the hand visible at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Moon Moon phase Crescent Full moon Celestial

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last thin moon was over the beeches when Hester Cray came out of the wood with her apron full of wet kindling and told her mother the boy was still in there. Her mother did not look up from the bread. She said Tam had gone in on the new moon, and the new moon was a bad time to go anywhere, and Hester said she knew that. She had been counting since.

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She had counted every evening from the stile below the wood. First the sliver on the far side of the sky, then the half, then the bright lopsided bowl, and then the full round face the old women called the Bell, because it hung so low over the mill roof that you could hear it ring. After that it had shrunk again, half and sliver, until tonight there was only the thinnest curl, and her grandmother said that was when the wood gave back what it kept.

"Then take the lantern and go on the last one," her mother said, "and don't answer anything that asks your name."

The path under the beeches was pale as bone. At the charcoal pits, where the smoke lay flat between the trunks, she found Tam sitting on a stump with his knees drawn up. He looked at her and said, "I counted too. I got to seven and then it stopped being the moon I knew."

She held out the lantern. Above the clearing the last curl of light slid down behind the trees, one shade at a time, until there was nothing left to count. Tam stood up and walked out beside her, and the wood let them go without a sound.