Traditional style colour tattoo of a tipi beside a campfire under a red moon, with pine trees, clouds and stars, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tipi, campfire and red moon on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A tipi sits among pine trees beneath a large red moon with grey shading, with grey clouds and four-pointed stars above. A campfire with red and orange flames sits at the lower left of the design. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with soft grey shading on the moon and clouds, and the red, orange and yellow fills are set against a pale skin background.

Traditional Upper arm Campfire Moon Cloud Star Pine tree Tent

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, the fire won't reach the back of you the way it reaches your face, and the moon is going to do what it does. Red, you see? Our grandmothers said a red moon means someone has kept a thing too long. They were right about that, because the autumn Tomas Varga came back across the water, the moon hung over Carrick Island just that colour, like a coal somebody had forgotten to blow out.

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He came in a borrowed skiff with a tin of matches, a knife, and no clear idea of where he had left his wife. He raised a tipi of hide and pole on the shingle, where the pines grow so thick they keep the wind off, and lit a fire on the point so the ferrymen would see it and come for him. Every night he counted stars through the gaps in the cloud, four at a time, and every night he fed the flames another armful of driftwood.

The ferry did not come. The rain came instead, grey and sideways, and the fire hissed and sulked and held. On the ninth night the moon went red and a lantern bobbed up through the reeds, and a boy of about twelve climbed out, soaked to the knees, holding a folded letter up in both hands. It said only: the fire is still lit, come home.

Tomas read it twice, put the kettle on, and handed the boy the first cup. They sat until the stars went out one by one, and nobody said a word about the water.