Two photographs: a colour spiral galaxy tattoo on the back of a hand in blue and orange, and a black and grey dotwork galaxy with a pink core on a shoulder.

Spiral galaxy tattoos on a hand and a shoulder

Realism · Hand · Mixed · Photo

The left photograph shows a spiral galaxy on the back of a hand, with a glowing orange core, blue and teal nebula clouds and scattered specks of light that extend onto the fingers. The right photograph shows a shoulder with a dotwork spiral galaxy built from stippled black and grey shading, a soft pink centre and small white star highlights. Both pieces are shown as close, well lit views of the skin.

Realism Dotwork Hand Shoulder Galaxy Spiral Star Nebula Space

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The miller's youngest daughter, Hanne, went out to the edge of Sallow Wood the night after the fire at the dye works, because her mother had said the sky had gone wrong. There was no moon. Above the clearing where the old well stood, the stars were turning slowly round one point, like water going down a drain, and the point was a bright orange eye with blue smoke about it.

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Hanne had brought a bucket on a rope, as her grandmother had taught her for catching what fell. She lowered it into the well. It came up heavy and full of light, and the light was cold and moved in arms that curled inward. She carried it home without spilling, though her hands ached. The villagers came to look. Old Peder said it was a seed the sky had dropped and that it wanted feeding, so they gave it what they had: a brass button, a lock of hair, a sprig of rowan, a page torn from the parish register.

The light took each thing and turned it to specks. By midsummer the bucket glowed blue at its rim, and fine dust settled over the dye works in a pattern like stars. Nobody could agree whether to be glad. Hanne went back to the well and dropped the rope once more, and this time she drew up a small dark stone, cool as a pond bottom, with one white fleck in it.

She set the stone on the windowsill beside the bucket. In the morning the bucket was empty and the stone had turned. The light had gone back up into the wood, and where the well had been there was only a mossy ring. The sky over Sallow was full of stars that had not been there before, drifting round a single bright point like a dog going round its bed.