Close view of a solid black tribal-style sun tattoo with flame-like rays on the lower back, above a pair of blue jeans.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun tattoo on the lower back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black circular sun with flame-like rays sits at the centre of the frame on bare skin. The linework is bold and the centre is filled in solid black, with tapered, curling rays extending outwards in all directions. The warm skin tone and blue-grey background contrast with the dark ink, and the top of a pair of jeans is visible along the bottom of the image.

Back Sun Ray

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sundial had not cast a shadow since Martinmas, and Brother Anselm had begun to suspect the sun had quietly transferred its attentions to some warmer abbey further south. The gnomon was still there, a thin bar of bronze gone green at the edges, but the dial beneath it had split clean across the face in the frost, leaving a useless plate of grey stone.

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The old abbot's drawing was still pinned inside the chapter house cupboard, a crude sun with a solid black heart and rays that curled and tapered like smoke off a wick. Anselm carried it down the lane to a smith named Hob, who read it upside down, grunted, and said he could cut it from a sheet of old plough iron. They worked through sleet for three days. Hob hammered the rays into shape while Anselm held the tongs and counted under his breath, and the novice Edwin kept asking whether the curls were meant to turn with the hours or against them.

On the morning of the fourth day they carried the new plate up to the cloister and set it in fresh mortar. Edwin knelt to level it with a plumb line while Anselm watched the sky, grey as pewter from one edge of the fells to the other. Then a seam tore open above the roofs, a single bar of light slid down the east walk, found the iron, and threw its shadow sharp and black across the flags.

Anselm took out the abbey book and wrote the hour in his cramped hand. The shadow crept on, slow as a monk at vespers, and by noon it lay across the slab where the old abbot was buried, laying its dark rays over the worn letters of his name. Edwin asked whether that was a sign. Anselm said it was only noon, that the sun was doing its work, and that the rest was for the abbot to judge.