Close-up of a blue crescent moon tattoo with two small stars and the lettering 'To the moon and back' on the upper back, in a lettering style.

To the moon and back with crescent moon

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

A blue crescent moon with two small star shapes sits in the centre of the design, with the words 'TO THE MOON' arched above and 'AND BACK' below in black lettering. The moon is shaded from teal to deep blue, while the lettering and stars are solid black on pale skin. The photograph is taken close up at a slight angle, with a white bra strap visible at the lower left edge.

Lettering Back Moon Crescent moon Star Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the pair of you, and mind the lamp, for the wind comes under the booking hall door like it has a grudge. I'll tell you about Ada Pennock, who kept the last light burning at Coldharbour Halt when the company wanted the line dark to save on coal.

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Every night at eleven she climbed the iron steps to the footbridge and hung a blue glass lantern from the hook above the up platform. Nobody asked her why blue. The signalmen said it was so the late goods could tell the halt from the bog beyond it. Ada said nothing. She only trimmed the wick and counted the stars over the water meadows, two that night, three the next, never more than the sky allowed.

Her brother Tom had gone east with the navvies years before, promising a letter at Christmas and a brooch from Lincoln shaped like the new moon. The letters came in March, then stopped. On the night the last one arrived, Ada hung her lantern as usual and stood on the bridge until the milk train had gone. She said aloud, to nobody, that she would keep the light as far as the moon went and back again, which was a sum no clerk could work out.

In the morning there was a tin on the bench under the clock, dented at one corner and wrapped in oilcloth. Inside was a crescent of blue enamel and a card in pencil: Still going. Keep it lit. T. Ada pinned the moon to her coat and climbed the steps at eleven, same as always, and the goods trains kept finding their way home.