Black fine line tattoo of a sun and crescent moon with dotted chain garlands and small stars across the ribs, below the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun, moon and dotted garland on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a sun with rays above a crescent moon, joined by dotted lines that hang in draped garlands and end in small star shapes. The linework is fine and the dotted strands are delicate, with light shading on the sun and moon. The design is in black ink on pale skin, and the upper body is partly covered by a white sweatshirt and a hand.

Fine line Dotwork Ribs Sun Moon Crescent Star Chain Celestial Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair left Shawbury on the Saturday without Mabel Crane, who had sold her last ride to a boy with a bad leg and stayed behind to mend the hinge on her trunk. By the time the hinge was done the lanterns were out along the hedgerow and the road had gone the colour of wet slate. She sat on the trunk and counted the stars coming through, and when she reached forty she gave up and started again.

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A man came up from the ford leading a mule that had no business being so calm. He wore his coat buttoned to the throat and carried a string of tin beads threaded on wire, with a brass sun no bigger than a coin at one end and a crescent moon at the other. "Your road has gone to the wrong side of the river," he said. "I can hang you a way back, if you'll pay the stars."

Mabel asked what the stars cost. He said a year of her laughing at other people's jokes, the good kind. She said that seemed cheap. He said that was what everybody said before the garland was up.

He strung the wire between the brass corners of her trunk, letting the beads hang in loops, each loop ending in a small point like a star. The sun shone dull gold and the moon dull silver, and when the last point caught the light he took his payment in a single bead, warm from her palm, and told her the fair would be waiting at the next crossroads with its lamps lit.

She followed the garland down the lane, and every time it dipped she felt a little of the year leave her. At the crossroads the lanterns were burning and somebody was laughing at a joke she had not yet heard, and she knew, without being told, that it was the good kind.