Fine line black tattoo of a ringed planet, two small stars and a crescent moon on the back of a hand, with a black elastic bracelet on the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small planet, stars and moon on a hand

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small cluster of black tattoos shows a ringed planet, two five-pointed stars and a crescent moon, spaced loosely across the back of a hand. The linework is thin and even, with solid outlines and no shading. The tattoo sits against pale skin, and a black woven elastic bracelet runs along the wrist on the left.

Fine line Hand Planet Saturn Star Moon Crescent moon 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

The officer at Veyl lifted the lid of my shoebox and frowned at what was inside: a coil of black elastic, a envelope of brittle paper and a star chart drawn in biro. Is this something to declare, he asked. I said it was a map of a sky that no longer existed, which was true, though not something he could stamp.

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My grandfather drew that chart in 1964 on the back of a ration card, marking every star he had watched from the roof of his flat in the old town. He taught me the names in the same voice he used for train times. Saturn with its loose ring, the crescent he called the boat, and two small stars he insisted were brothers who had quarrelled over a bicycle. When the flat was sold, the chart was the only thing nobody wanted, so it came with me.

He held the sheet under the lamp for a long time while the queue behind us shifted and sighed. His thumb followed the curve of the moon without quite touching it. Then he tilted his head and said his own mother had drawn the ring of that planet the same lopsided way, as if it were slipping off.

He stamped the back of my passport with a sound like a small door closing and handed the envelope back without looking at it again. I drove on through the dark with the lid propped open on the passenger seat, the real stars wheeling over the fields as though nobody had ever asked them to hold still.