Black and grey realism tattoo of a shaded full moon with a small whale and leafy sprigs on the inner upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon, whale and botanical sprigs on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large, shaded full moon with visible craters sits at the centre of the design. A small whale rises from the lower left edge of the moon, and sprigs of leaves and small flowers curve around the right and left sides. The linework is fine and the moon is built from dense grey shading, with the whole piece in black ink and greys on pale skin.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Moon Whale Leaves Flower Branches

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shift up, the lot of you, and mind the fire, because the old tellers always skipped this part and I'll not have it lost. Three hundred winters after the last ships stopped coming to Penhallow, the Moon still hung over the bay like a pewter plate someone had forgotten to wash. Folk had stopped looking at it. Nobody in my grandmother's day remembered it had craters, only that it pulled the tide twice a day and sulked when the nets came up empty.

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Then came the grey whale called Morwen, who had lost her calf in the mouth of the Severn and swam the estuary every new moon looking for it. She'd rise under the Moon's lamp, blowing silver breath, and the hawthorn on the seawall would come into bloom out of season, leaves and little white flowers climbing the stones as if they were listening. Old Cass Tully, who kept the lighthouse with one good eye, swore the dark places on the Moon turned greener every time Morwen sang.

One autumn the harbour council decided the whale was a nuisance and sent boats with harpoons forged from salvaged rail. Cass climbed the lighthouse, lit every lamp she owned, and told the men that a creature who could bring the trees back to the sea wall was not theirs to spear. They laughed at her. Then the Moon came up full, the biggest anyone had seen, and the whale rose beneath its lower edge, pale as a lantern, and sank again without a single drop of blood spilt.

Morwen never found her calf. But the next spring the sea wall was a hedge of white flowers, and the Moon's face showed a faint green bloom across its great grey sea. That is how it was told to me, and I've told it the same way for forty years. Pour the tea now, and mind the sparks.