Colour tattoo of a nebula with bright red and white stars across the upper arm, shaded in purple, blue and green.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nebula and stars on an upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a space scene with a glowing nebula of purple, blue, green and teal clouds, scattered with small white stars. A larger red four-pointed star sits near the centre, with a faint red streak across the lower part. The soft, blended shading and vivid colour fill the whole upper arm, with dark areas that give the clouds depth.

Upper arm Nebula Galaxy Star Space Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Priya,

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I nearly didn't reply to the reunion invitation. Forty years of hockey pitches and Mr Dunmore's chemistry smell, and the card came with a glossy photo of our old school gates as if anybody needed reminding. Then I found the shoebox under my bed with the star charts still in it, the ones we copied out on the roof of Hollins Road in Year Nine, and I thought, she'll still be the one who insisted the red star was dying.

It was, you said. Antares. We had plenty else wrong, but you were right that it would swell up and burn out eventually, and I suppose that's what I want to ask you about. Did you ever go back up to the roof? The caretaker padlocked the hatch the summer after we left, but I walked past last month and the railings look the same, and someone has scratched a crooked moon into the lead flashing.

Bring the good torch if you come on the Saturday. The car park shuts at nine, but the field behind the bike sheds is still dark enough to see the Milky Way, which is more than I can say for most of the town. I've been reading about nebulae, those clouds where stars are born from dust, all violet and teal when the big telescopes photograph them. I kept thinking how much of that we'd have missed if we hadn't stayed up.

Come on the Saturday. Stand next to me in the cold and tell me again which one is dying, and I'll tell you which one I've been watching.

Yours, the girl who held the torch, Carol