Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a moth with a crescent moon above and a dotted geometric circle below, on the forearm.

Moth and crescent moon on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed moth with patterned wings sits at the centre of the forearm, with a small crescent moon above its antennae. Below the moth, a circle of fine dotted lines forms a geometric web or sphere. The shading is built from stippled dots and fine linework, all in black ink and grey tones against pale skin and a dark top.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marguerite had counted the moths on the north wall for eleven nights before she admitted they were not drawn to the lamp. They came for the moon. It hung in the broken east window of Harrowgate Keep like a paring from a fingernail, and they settled in rows on the stones beneath it, wings folded, as though waiting to be called to order.

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The keep's last steward, Ambrose Tull, had left a ledger under a flagstone in the solar, wrapped in oilcloth and dry as bread. Marguerite had been hired by the trust to survey the roof timbers, not to read dead men's notes, but his handwriting was so careful that she turned page after page by candlelight. Each night had its moth and each moth had its hour. The final entry was a drawing of a great emperor moth with wings banded like a sundial, and beneath it a circle of pinpricks joined by fine lines, the way a spider measures a web before it spins. Below that he had written: 'They fly to the centre. Nothing comes out.'

On the new moon she carried a candle into the courtyard, pressed a compass point into the wet flags and pricked her own ring of dots around it, one for each spoke of the old sundial. The moths arrived in a grey drift, circled the flame and never once crossed her line. Near dawn one of them folded its wings inside the ring and did not move again. When she went back to the ledger, there was a new line in the margin in her own hand, dated tonight: 'Her turn to keep watch.'

She tucked the pen behind her ear, climbed to the east window and sat down among the moths to wait for the moon to rise.

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