Black and grey sun and moon face tattoo with compass letters N and W on the side of the ribs, in a traditional style.

Sun and moon face on the ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A sun with a crescent moon face sits at the centre, its rays shaded with stippled patterns and surrounded by fine scrolling vines. Compass letters N and W appear in delicate linework at the top and left. The design is rendered in black and grey with bold outlines and dotted shading, photographed on the side of a torso.

Traditional Ribs Sun Moon Face Compass Vine Scroll Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the bells in the valley had rung out noon, the mule had stopped refusing and started counting, one hoof at a time, as if the path were a sum it did not trust. You walk behind it with the compass open in your palm. The needle has given up on north. It swings between the N scratched on the lid and the W worn almost smooth, and Aunt Hedda's voice says in your head what it always said: a needle that cannot choose is only showing you where the mountain is pulling.

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The pass is called the Sleeping Moon, though nobody on the lower farms agrees why. Hedda told you that the sun and moon were once married and quarrelled over which of them the shepherds loved better. In a temper the sun burned off his own rays, and the moon gathered them up into a face so she would not have to cry in front of him. Your grandmother's brass medallion hangs against your collarbone, the sly-eyed moon wrapped in a sunburst of spikes. She gave it to you for the crossing. You have not decided whether it is a charm or a debt.

At the cairn the wind drops all at once. The mule sighs and lowers its head into the grass. The needle quivers, then settles on the W, and you understand that it was never lost. It had only been waiting for you to stop walking towards the N, towards the village that keeps asking when you will come home.

You tip the medallion so the moon's face looks back up the pass, the way a mother checks a sleeping child, and you go down the western side where the stones are furred with vines.