Black ink tattoo of a sun with a serene face, curling rays and dotted stipple, plus a small star, on the side of the ribs.

Sun face with swirling dotted rays on ribs

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a sun with a closed-eyed face, a small nose and a faint smile, with a small star to its upper right. Bold black outlines define the face and the long curling rays, while stippled dots fill the outer rays and add texture. The design is all black ink and is centred on the side of the torso, with the rays spreading outward across the skin.

Dotwork Ribs Sun Star Swirl Ray Dot Stipple

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sun had been sleeping for nine days when Ysolde climbed the relay mast at Halden Reach, a flask of cold tea knotted to her belt. Below her the dome farms lay grey under a sky that had forgotten how to be gold. Her grandmother had insisted the old sun had a face, closed eyes and a smile like someone pretending not to listen, and that its rays were less like light than like a long argument carried across the dark.

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At the top the mirror cradle groaned in the wind. Every panel was furred with dust, and the dust had settled into fine dots that caught the lamplight, thousands of them, stippled across the glass like frost on a windowpane. Ysolde knelt, wiped the first panel with her sleeve, and counted. Each ray had its own bearing, its own curl, and her grandmother had taught her to tune them the way you would coax a stubborn cat, one slow turn at a time. Out to the east the evening star blinked at her from its station, as if it found the whole business faintly ridiculous.

She worked through the night. Her fingers went numb, then warm, then numb again. Twice she lost a ray to the wind and had to climb back down for a spare. When the eastern horizon finally thinned to pewter, the cradle hummed, the mirrors bloomed one after another, and somewhere far below a single beam of brightness slid over the rooftops of Halden Reach.

A girl no older than six stood in a yard full of frozen beans and lifted her face to it. Ysolde watched her from the mast, her tea long gone cold, and found she was smiling too.