Fine line black star tattoo on the shoulder and a small crescent moon tattoo on the upper chest, shown in a sepia photograph.

Small star and crescent moon tattoos

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A tiny solid five-pointed star sits on the top of the shoulder, and a small crescent moon sits lower on the upper chest near the collarbone. Both motifs are rendered in clean, thin black linework with solid fill and no shading. The image is a sepia-toned close crop of the neck, shoulder and chest, with a dark knitted garment with a white fur trim framing the shoulder.

Fine line Shoulder Chest Star Crescent moon Moon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold the rope still, boy, and listen, because the sea does not wait for a man to finish his tea. My grandfather sailed the Corrie Mhor out of Kirkwall with a hold full of salt cod and a navigator who could not read a chart. Her name was Agnes Tulloch, and she found her way by the sky the way other folk find their way home from the pub, through habit and sheer stubbornness.

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Every night for nine weeks Agnes went to the rail with a brass sextant and a tin of ship's biscuits, and she spoke to a small star that sat above the western swell like a pin in a cushion. The mate laughed at her. Then the fog came down on the eleventh night, and the compass spun like a dropped coin in a dish. The mate stopped laughing. Agnes did not look at the compass at all. She waited for the thin moon to climb out of the murk, and she steered by the gap between the two of them, the way a sailor's mother might steer a child across a busy road.

The trouble came when the moon went down early and the star slid behind a bank of cloud. Agnes sat on the wet deck, took off her gloves, and said quite calmly that they would now have to trust the swell. The men argued until their voices gave out. Then the long grey swell lifted them from the north, patient as a hand under a sleeping dog, and at first light it showed them a line of cliffs with one lamp still burning on the headland.

That lamp belonged to Agnes's sister, who had promised years before to keep it lit until somebody came home. So when you see a sailor with a star inked near his collarbone, don't ask him what it's for. He'll tell you it's for finding the way back, and that's true enough. Now pass me that tin. The biscuits are the only honest thing on this boat.