Black ink tattoo of a snake eating its tail forming a circle around a tree and crescent moon, placed on the centre of the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ouroboros with tree and moon on chest

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A snake biting its own tail forms a thick, brush-textured black circle that surrounds a tree with a crescent moon at its base. The linework is bold and uneven, with solid black areas and soft grey edges, and the ring has a slightly feathered, hand-painted quality. The design is in black ink only, centred on the upper chest against pale skin and a dark top.

Chest Snake Tree Moon Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lamp's already sulking and I'll not waste oil on you if you're going to fidget. Right. You know the snake who swallowed his own tail at the edge of Farrow Meadow? Folk say he was always a hungry thing, forever wanting more road. He chased the wagons from Ashby to Lowther one whole summer and never once caught up with what he was after.

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That October the fair stopped beside an old ash tree, and the showman's daughter, Nell Varley, climbed it to fetch a ribbon the wind had taken. From the top she saw the moon lying in the roots like a dropped sickle, too tired to rise. "Take me up," said the moon, "and I'll go where you go." Nell told her she had no such power, but she had a pocket full of barley cake, so she broke it in two and shared it, and the moon thanked her by lending her the last warm light of the year.

The snake heard all this from the grass and came hissing up the trunk, wanting that light for himself. The moon was caught fast in the roots, so the snake, greedy as ever, wound round the tree to reach her and tightened, and tightened, until his head came round to meet his own tail and he could not let go. That is why he is a ring now, and why the tree stands in the middle of him with the moon curled at its feet.

Nell's father sold the fair the following spring. If you put your ear to the ground by that ash at Farrow Meadow, even now, you can hear him still going round, looking for the end of himself.