Black ink ornamental crescent moon tattoo with dotwork lace patterns and dangling drops on the upper arm.

Ornamental crescent moon on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon with a lace-like mandala pattern sits above a central teardrop-shaped ornament, with a column of dangling dots and drops below. The linework is bold black with fine dotwork infill and open lace detail, and there is no colour ink. The design is centred on the outer upper arm against a plain skin tone, with a colourful tie-dye fabric visible in the background.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Crescent moon Mandala Lace Dotwork Teardrop Ornament Drop Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm kept the lamp in the scriptorium trimmed low so the ink would not thicken, and every night before compline he copied the crescent from the old exemplar again, because the abbot said the first drawing had been made by a hand already failing. I was twelve that winter and not yet allowed a pen dipped in anything darker than soot. Instead I ground oak galls in a mortar until my wrists ached, and he never once looked up to tell me it was enough.

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The lace that hung from the moon's horns was not decoration, he told me. Each dot was a night the brothers had kept vigil for someone who had gone down to the coast and not come back up the valley road. He had written the names in a book that nobody else was permitted to open. When I asked why the moon needed so many drops, he said the sky was patient and the sea was not, and that a line which wept ought to be counted.

In the spring his eyes clouded over at the edges, and the abbot gave me the pen for the teardrop at the centre. I drew it fuller than the exemplar, a little heavier at the base, and Anselm, who could no longer see it clearly, asked me to read him the shape with my fingers over the parchment. I told him it was a boat with its sail furled. He laughed, and said that was near enough.

When the abbot came through at Lauds he stopped at the page for a long time and then closed the book without a word. Anselm was buried in the orchard that May. I added one last drop beneath the others, and I counted it for him.