Black and white line drawing of a sun and moon face split down the middle, with the words we live by the sun and we feel by the moon around it.

Sun and moon face with quote lettering

Black and grey · Flash

A black and white line drawing of a stylised face divided into two halves, with a detailed sun pattern of petals and rays on the left and a moon of wavy and dotted lines on the right. The phrase we live by the sun, we feel by the moon runs around the circle, with clouds, stars, spirals and a striped border framing the design. The linework is fine and even, and the image uses only black ink on white with no shading in greys.

Sun Moon Face Cloud Star Spiral Quote Lettering Border

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hettie,

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Forty years on and the gym at Harcourt Road still smells of floor polish and crisp packets. I stood by the trophy case for an hour before I could bring myself to go in. You'd have laughed at me. You always said I lived by the timetable, and you were the one who wandered out to the field at night to look at the moon over the goalposts.

Mr Ackroyd is still on the committee, and he stood up at the buffet to read out the quote from the mural in the lower corridor, the one with the sun and moon painted in halves. We live by the sun, we feel by the moon. Everyone clapped as if it were a motto someone had chosen for us, not something he'd dug out of a box of Year Nine art projects. Nobody remembered who painted the face. I did, and I didn't say so.

Your name came up over the second glass of red. Dermot still has the photograph of us on the roof of the bike shed, and he passed it round like a hymn sheet. In it you're squinting at the sky and I'm pretending not to watch you. I asked him to send me a copy. He said he'd post it, which means he won't, so I'm sending you this instead.

I walked home the long way, past the field. The moon was low over the goalposts, exactly where you used to point. I stood there until a dog started barking at me, and I thought, well, Hettie, at least one of us still feels it properly. Come to the next one. Bring the rubbish telescope.

Love, Tom