Black and grey tattoo of planets and dots running down the inner forearm, with a ringed planet like Saturn in the middle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Solar system planets down a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A row of planets runs down the forearm, from small dotted orbs near the wrist to larger shaded spheres near the elbow, with one ringed planet in the middle. Soft grey shading gives the planets a round, dimensional look, and stippled dots scatter between them to suggest stars or debris. The arm rests on a wooden desk beside a dark object, with a blue patterned sleeve cuff at the wrist.

Dotwork Realism Forearm Planet Solar system Saturn Moon Star Space

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down by the oven door, love, where the heat reaches, and mind the flour on that stool. You'll not sleep now, so you may as well learn how a bakery keeps the sky. My grandmother ran the ovens at Harrow Lane before the war, and she used to say the first loaves of the morning were the planets, set out in a row on the long board so the proving could go in order. The smallest ones went nearest the door, little pale knots that barely moved, and the bigger ones sat further in, wide and slow, the way the ovens liked them.

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Every morning she set out eight, and she always made the ninth herself, the one with a ring of scored dough around its middle. Nobody else was allowed to touch it. She said it had to turn in its own time or it would fall flat and sulk. When the lads asked why it had a ring, she said Saturn had always been vain, and that was the end of the conversation.

Then came the winter the flour ran short, and she made only the small ones, so the board looked like a field of dust specks. The baker from across the road came over in his coat and asked her what she thought she was doing. She said she was keeping the dark company until the sun came back for its breakfast. He laughed until he had to sit down, and then he went off to fetch the good butter.

The first loaf out at dawn is always the one nearest the door. Watch the crust when I lift it. It goes the colour of the sky just before it knows it is morning, and that is the only moment the bakery is ever truly quiet.