Small black fine line tattoo of a row of planets, including a ringed planet like Saturn, on the upper back below purple hair.

Planet row tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of the upper back of a person with long purple hair falling across one shoulder. A small black tattoo shows a horizontal row of planets, with a ringed planet in the centre and smaller dotted spheres trailing to the right. The linework is crisp and the ink is solid black with no shading, set against pale skin and a blue top.

Fine line Dotwork Back Planet Saturn Solar system Dot Space

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You climb Scarrow Pass with the oil cans knocking against your hips an hour before dusk, because Agnes Hollis said the signal row has to be lit before the snow comes off the north face. There are seven posts strung along the ridge, each with a tin lantern on a hook. The largest sits at the saddle beside the keeper's hut, the one with the iron hoop bolted round its top, and the smaller ones trail eastward toward the drop like someone scattering seed.

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The wind finds you at the third post. Your fingers are too cold to strike the flint, so you breathe on the wick the way your grandfather taught you, slowly, as if you were telling it a secret it might believe. The first lamp catches. Far below, at Lowe, a carter stops his mule and lifts a hand. You count the lamps the way Agnes made you count the planets when you were small: Mercury, Venus, the ringed one, and the little moons that never stay still.

At the sixth post the flint slips into the snow and you have to crawl for it. By the time you reach the seventh, the saddle lamp has gone out behind you and the ridge has vanished. You stop, feel along the cold rail with your palm, and count the posts by touch the way you would count rungs on a ladder you know by heart.

When the cloud tears open, there is the row again, seven small flames strung across the black, the saddle lamp burning brightest of all, and the carters below are already moving toward them. You stand there with the empty can in your hand and understand that the posts were never really there to show the way over. They were there to show that someone was still up on the pass, keeping count.