Fine line tattoos on a hand: a small crescent moon and a sun on the fingers, three dots on another finger, and a small mark on the back of the hand.

Small moon, sun and dot tattoos on fingers

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand with several small, delicate tattoos: a crescent moon on one finger, a sun with rays on the adjacent finger, three dots along a third finger, and a small angular mark on the back of the hand. The linework is thin and the ink is dark grey-black. The hand is shown against a plain wall with maroon nail polish and two turquoise-stoned rings.

Fine line Hand Moon Sun Dot Hand Ring

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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 take the late shift at Hollin Cross because nobody else wants the box after the last stopping train. The lamp in the signal room buzzes, and the telegraph key sits under your palm like a sleeping animal. At half past eleven the moon hangs over the down platform, thin as a paring knife, and you write its phase in the logbook beside the train numbers, the way your father taught you on the Tyne line before the closures.

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Three dots come through on the bell wire at ten past midnight. Three short, a pause, then nothing. You know it is not meant for you. Somebody at the junction is testing the line, or somebody has forgotten the code they learned in a classroom forty years ago. You tap back the answer your father would have tapped, the wire goes quiet, and you feel foolish and comforted at once.

At first light the sun comes up over the goods yard, a hard orange thing with its rays cut short by the gantries. You walk the platform checking the points, boots crunching on cinders, and the zigzag chalked on the shunter's hut door catches your eye, the same mark someone drew there after a signalman was struck years back. You stop. You touch it with a gloved thumb, the way you would touch a cold rail.

At six the day man arrives with his flask and his crossword. He asks if it was quiet. You tell him the line was clear all night, which is true, and that somebody sent you a message, which he doesn't need to hear. You hand over the book. Through the window the moon is still up, pale and unhurried, refusing to leave.