Stippled dotwork drawing of two open palms beneath a sunburst and a row of moon phases, with rosette shapes at the wrists, in black and ochre ink on cream paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stippled hands with sun and moon phases

Dotwork · Mixed · Flash

Two open palms, drawn palm up, sit below a sunburst and a curved arc of moon phases from new to full. The shading is built from dense black dots, with the sun and crescents filled in ochre and gold. Thin line work links the moon phases and the rosette-like shapes at the cuffs against a plain cream background.

Dotwork Hand Sun Moon phase Crescent moon Sunburst Rosette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags Penhale had been told since girlhood that a wedding at Porthgwidden must be set by the moon, not the calendar, so the vicar had moved the banns twice. On the Saturday the sun came up over the lifeboat house like a brass plate, and Joan Tregarthen stood on the slipway with a tin of mint imperials and the tide table pinned inside her coat.

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The vows were to be said at low water so the sand would hold the folding chairs. Nobody had asked the groom, a net-mender called Owen Ledger, whether he minded holding his palms up for the old custom: each hand open, the other's hand laid flat on top, nothing gripped. Joan had watched it done at her own wedding in 1971 and had never got used to how bare it made a person look, standing there with their hands out like they were waiting for rain.

Halfway through the second line the water lifted off the weed a full minute before the almanac said it would. Joan saw it from the wall and knew the moon had got ahead of them. She should have kept quiet, but she stepped forward with her cardigan buttoned to the throat and said, "Tide's making, Owen, say the rest quick." He laughed, said it in one breath, and they were married with wet socks and the chairs floating off towards the harbour mouth.

Afterwards Joan walked the empty sand counting the phases off on her fingers, new to full and back again. The crescent had gone down behind the breakwater and a full moon was rising over the bay like a coin someone had dropped. She folded the tide table into her pocket and kept it there for the rest of her life, though she never once managed to get a wedding started on time.