Colour realism tattoo on an upper arm showing glowing planets, asteroids and lightning arcing through a red and blue nebula.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Planets and lightning across an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm with a space scene: two large cratered planets, a smaller planet lower down, and a cluster of dark asteroids. Bright lightning-like veins run across a nebula that shifts from orange and red at the centre to deep blue and violet at the edges. Soft shading gives the planets volume and a realistic, painterly finish, and the scene wraps around the arm so the planets sit near the shoulder while the asteroids drift toward the elbow.

Realism Upper arm Planet Nebula Lightning Space Galaxy

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The storm came over the Downs about two, and by three the east wing had gone quiet except for the monitors, which I have decided are the only honest things in this building. I sat at the desk with the lamp off so my eyes would keep the dark. Through the window the sky kept splitting into pale veins, and each time it did, the car park lit up like a photograph left in the sun.

Mrs Okafor in bed nine asked me what the flashes were. I told her they were the planets arguing, which made her laugh enough to cough, and then she wanted to know which one was winning. I said Mars, because that's what Dad used to say when he was losing at Scrabble. She didn't get the joke, but she slept after that, and I found myself looking up the way he used to, pointing out where the cold rocks were drifting.

Grandad's old atlas of the heavens is still in my bag. Tonight I opened it to the page with the smallest red world, the one he circled in biro and labelled "ours, probably not". I thought about how far those rocks must travel without anyone checking the time.

At half five the rain stopped and the lightning went off somewhere over the sea. I walked out to the bins with a bag of linen and stood there a minute, breathing. The sky had gone the colour of a bruise fading to yellow at the edges, with one bright thread still hanging over the roofs. I'll come home on Sunday. Save me the chair by the window.

Love, Jo