Black ink drawing of a dotwork moth with feathered antennae and a crescent moon with stars hanging below, shown as a tattoo design on plain cream paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moth and crescent moon design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical moth with spread wings sits at the centre of the design, with feathered antennae at the top and a dotted line running down to a small crescent moon with stars. The wings use bold outlines with stippled dot shading and fine hatched lines on the body. The drawing is in black ink on a pale cream background, with no colour and no body part shown.

Dotwork Blackwork Moth Crescent moon Star Feather Antennae Dotted line Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp over the wheelhouse door had been pulling moths out of the dark since the boats left Porthgarrow, and by three in the morning the deck was dusted with them. Dan Roskilly swept them into the scuppers with the side of his boot and swore at each one, because a moth on the rail meant the herring were deep and the nets would come up empty. His father had told him that, and his father had been wrong about most things except that.

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Ruth Penhallow, who ran the nets from the stern, watched him do it and said nothing for a while. Then she pointed past the mast at the sky, where the moon hung low and thin as a paring over the headland. 'Moon's going,' she said. 'Going's good for the fish. Lights bring them up, dark brings them up better.' The other boats showed their lamps like coins scattered on black water, and the moths kept coming, pale wings flaring in the glare, drifting out over the sea and not coming back.

They hauled at first light. The net came over the gunwale heavy and silver, and Dan stood with a fistful of wet mesh, looking at a single moth caught in the corner of it, its wings still powdered. He thought about tossing it back. Instead he picked it free with two fingers and set it on the wheelhouse sill, where the lamp had gone grey and useless in the daylight.

Ruth came up behind him with the tally book. 'Forty boxes,' she said. 'Your moth's lucky.' He shook his head. 'It's just cold,' he said, and watched it open its wings once, slow, as if it had decided the morning was its own.