Black and grey forearm tattoo of a moth on a branch inside a solid black circle, with a fine line botanical nest and foliage design beside it.

Moth on a branch in a black circle

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A white-line moth with spotted wings rests on a slender branch, with a hand holding the stem at the lower left of the circle. The circle is filled with solid black ink, while the moth and branch are rendered in fine, precise linework. A separate botanical piece with feathers, foliage and a nest-like form covers the upper left of the forearm, all in black and grey.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the bells of Harrowmere rang the second watch, the luna moth had settled on the blackthorn bough, and Maud Tennick had already decided she would not be the one to net it. The king's proclamation was nailed to every gatepost in the valley: any moth bearing painted eyes on its wings was to be brought to the wax-house before the frost, because the eyes were said to look backward into the dead. Maud had read the notice twice by lantern light, looking for a loophole, and found only the seal.

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She went out with the branch in her left hand, cutting it where the stem thickened, and carried it down past the sheep pens to the mere. The water there was as black as a slate roof after rain, and the hawthorn on the far bank held a nest woven from grey feathers, the kind no crow in that country ever bothered to steal. Three eggs lay in the hollow, pale as the tallow the king's men were boiling for their candles. She set the stem against the trunk and held it steady while the moth turned its wings, slowly, to show her the eyes.

The king's men never came round the mere path. Instead the moth lifted from the bough, circled once over the water, and settled on the nest's rim beside the eggs, folding its wings so the eyes faced outward like a row of small lamps. Maud understood then what the proclamation had got wrong. The eyes did not look back into the dead. They watched over whatever was still being born, and the king, who had never once sat up with a sleeping child, had simply been afraid of being watched.

That night the wax-house went dark for the first time in a generation, and the valley slept with its shutters open.

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