Black and grey pentagram set within a crescent moon with spiral ornaments, tattooed on a shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pentagram and crescent moon with swirls on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a single tattoo showing a five-pointed star outlined and shaded in black and grey, with its lower points overlapping a crescent moon. Spiral scroll ornaments are etched into the crescent, and the linework is clean with soft grey shading that gives the star depth. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame against plain skin with a dark background at the edges.

Shoulder Pentagram Star Crescent moon Spiral Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The sextant came back to me in a flour sack, its glass cracked straight across, with a note from the Marl Wells postmaster saying only that the road had taken it. I have not told Mrs Okafor, though she asks after you each morning when she brings the goats past the gate. You will want to know the track is still there, and that the nights have turned cold enough to need the wool blanket from the chest.

The star you drew in the margin of your last letter, the one with the moon tucked under its lower arms and the little curls inside the crescent like the tails of sleeping cats, I have pinned above the stove. Your father would have called it foolishness, the old marks of men who sailed by stars when there was nothing else to sail by. But I have been reading your survey charts at night, and the curls are not decoration. They follow the bends of the wash where the flood left its ledge last spring. You were right about that.

Last night the sky was clear and the moon rose thin as a fingernail over the ridge. I took the lamp to the back step and counted the points of the figure the way you showed me, and the third star sat exactly where your pencil said it would. I did not expect to feel so relieved by a dot of light.

So I have left the lamp burning in the kitchen window, facing the track. If you come in before the dust settles, you will not need the sextant at all. Come home by the star. Mind the cracked glass.

Yours, Ines