Black and grey realism tattoo of a pentagram inside a circle with sun rays, crossed stakes and a lantern-style object, on the side of the ribs.

Pentagram and sun emblem on the side ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a five-pointed star inside a circular disc with sawtooth sun-like rays behind it. Two crossed stake-like shapes and a cylindrical object with ribbed detail sit over and below the disc. The linework is bold and the shading is soft and grey, giving the objects some depth. The design is in black ink on pale skin, centred in the frame, with a tattoo studio visible in the background.

Realism Ribs Pentagram Sun Circle Star Emblem Lantern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The disc had been nailed above the cellar door at Scarrow Hythe for longer than anyone could remember, and Mrs Ilse Garrow was the first to say it should come down. She said it in the chandlery on a Tuesday, with her gloves still on, and the men around the stove went quiet the way they did when the wind changed.

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Her husband had carved the stakes from ash the winter the herring failed. Two of them crossed beneath the disc, and the brass lantern hung between them on a hook, its ribs polished by thirty years of thumbs. Nobody lit it in daylight. The tin rays behind the disc threw a jagged shadow across the cobbles each evening when the sun slipped behind the mill, and the children counted the teeth as they ran through it.

Ilse took the lantern down on a Thursday. She carried it along the quay to the old net loft, where a lad named Tobias Reeve lay on the sacks with a fever and a cough like a rusted hinge. She set the lantern on the sill, lit the wick with a spill from the stove, and sat with him until the flame stood straight. Five points, she told him, the way her husband had taught her. Five points to hold the door shut.

By morning the fever had broken and the stakes were back in the mud, tangled with weed. The men pried the disc from the cellar door with a crowbar, and it came away heavier than tin. Ilse kept the lantern and hung it in the loft window where the boats could see it. Each evening the sawtooth shadow still crossed the water, sharp as ever.