Colour realism tattoo of a pink, purple and teal nebula with stars, framed by grey sculpted hands, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nebula held in grey hands on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

An oval design shows a galaxy or nebula with pink, violet, blue and teal clouds and small white stars. Grey, sculpted hands with shaded knuckles and fingers grip the outer edge of the oval frame. The tattoo sits centrally on a pale forearm against a dark leather background, with part of another blue and pink tattoo visible at the top edge.

Realism Forearm Nebula Galaxy Star Hand Oval frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Oswin Peat had carved hands for the Duke of Hallowmere for eleven years, and never once had he been asked to carve something that breathed. The order came in the dry month: a frame for the Queen's night-glass, a looking-stone that would show the sky above the palace at any hour, even when cloud sealed the city. He worked the grey granite until his knuckles ached, shaping each finger so it seemed to grip the rim as if the sky might slip out into the dark.

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The night-glass arrived at his workshop in a cart packed with straw and wool. Inside was no stone at all but a cloud of violet and rose, fading into teal where the blue of deep water had been poured through it, and small white points burned in it like sparks off a forge. Oswin's apprentice, a girl called Tamsin who ate apples core and all, asked whether the sky would fall out if the hands let go. Oswin said nothing. He had set the frame and sealed the glass, and no one had told him what the sky was made of.

The Queen came at midnight to see it. She held the frame to her face and stood a long while, the way people stand at the edge of the sea. "It is always the same stars," she said at last, "only we keep forgetting where they are." Then she gave it back and asked for the hands to be carved a little looser, so that anyone looking could see the sky might leave if it wished.

Oswin reworked the knuckles by lamplight until dawn, leaving a gap where a fingertip should have pressed. When the Queen returned the next winter, the gap was still there, and a single star had moved into it.