Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a hawk moth above overlapping circles and a small solid triangle, on a forearm.

Moth and geometric dotwork on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm carries a detailed hawk moth with wings and body shaded in black and grey, set above a sacred geometry design. The geometry is built from dotted circles, arcs and straight lines that meet at a small solid triangle near the lower centre. The photograph is taken straight on against a plain light background, with the design filling the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Moth Circle Triangle Geometric line Sacred geometry

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The string had to be drawn taut before a single dot went down, and Edith Moss would not let the carter hold the far end. He was a big man who pulled too hard, and a boundary bent by a thumb was a boundary that lied. So she walked the line herself, one hand on the reel and the other on the bradawl that pricked each point through the chalk, until the circle closed around the edge of Hollin Wood like a coin laid on a page.

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The moth came to the lamp on the third evening. It was longer than her palm across the wings, grey and furred and banded with cream, and on its back the pattern looked for all the world like a skull. Mrs Pell at the inn said a death's-head in the house meant a funeral by Sunday. Ruth Garrow, who kept bees on the common, said such moths carried news between hives and should never be swatted. Edith took neither view. She noted the moth's measurements in the field book instead, because the stake was due in the morning and the outer arc still wanted its centre.

The three parishes met under the dead oak, where the lines crossed in a knot of blackthorn. Edith set the centre stone there at dawn, sighting through the reel and the lamp hook. The moth had gone by then, but it had left a fine dust on the brass that would not wipe clean.

When the book went back to the Hall, she had inked the final mark as a solid triangle, the way the old men did for a point that could not be argued with. Ruth came to look at it and said nothing about moths. She only touched the page where the three lines met and left a faint smear of wax from her thumb.