Black and grey dotwork moth tattoo with a geometric background, sitting on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moth with geometric background on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large moth with symmetrical, spread wings sits at the centre of the design, with its body running vertically along the arm. The wings and body are built from fine stippled dots and clean linework, with shading that gives the wings depth. Behind and around the moth, a geometric pattern of faceted, interlocking shapes fills the background in black and grey.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Moth Wing Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm had been ruling the same line for an hour when the moth came in through the shutter and began circling the lamp over his desk. He let it be. The margin of the psalter for the Lady chapel needed a border of lozenges, each one faceted like the cut glass of the east window, and he drew them with a hard silver point, measuring twice because the abbot had measured once and found fault.

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Prior Edric came down the cloister at Compline with salt on his sleeve from the refectory and asked whether the leaf would be finished by Sunday. Anselm said it would. The prior looked at the bare space in the centre of the page, where the Magnificat initial was meant to sit, and asked what the empty square was for. Anselm did not answer, because the moth had chosen that moment to settle on the wet ink, wings spread flat as a pair of open hands.

He did not brush it away. He lifted the pin from its cork, pricked the vellum in the faint shape of the wings, and worked the dots closer together wherever the wing curved toward the candle, so that the shadow grew out of the stipple rather than being painted over it. It took until the bell for Matins. The moth flew off somewhere in the dark of the scriptorium.

On Sunday the prior turned the leaf to the light and studied the stippled moth for a long while. He traced one wing with his thumb, careful of the ink, and said the Lady would surely prefer a moth to a plain square. Then he closed the book gently and left it open at that page, where it stayed for the rest of the year.