Woman seen from behind with a black outline star trail running from the nape of the neck down the upper back, with small grey sparkles between the stars.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Trail of stars down the upper back

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman seen from behind, with her hands raised to her head and her face not shown. A trail of outlined stars in varying sizes runs down from the nape of the neck towards the upper back, with a few tiny grey sparkle shapes scattered between them. The linework is clean and the stars are unshaded, set against a plain skin background with a purple top strap in the lower frame.

Fine line Neck Back Star Sparkle Outline Trail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Put the kettle on, Nell, and mind the lock gate, it sticks in the cold. You want the story of the stars that came down the cut? Then sit where I can see your face, because I tell it badly to people who fidget.

Keep reading

It was the winter the fog sat on the Ashby flash for six weeks solid, and nobody could see the towpath from the tiller. Morwenna Pryce, keeper of Hatherby Lock, went out each night with a sack of tin lanterns and hung them from the willows, one after another, all the way down to the bend. She made the lowest ones the biggest, because a bargee coming up in the murk needs the bright ones where the water turns.

Dinah Brook was bringing coal up from Stourport with a boat too deep in the water, and she lost the path entirely. She followed the lights by feel, lantern by lantern, sure that each one was the last before the wall. When the fog finally lifted, the lanterns were gone, taken down by the morning wind or by Morwenna's own tired hands. But the river had kept their shape. Sparks of frost still hung on the reeds where the big lamps had been, and grey specks of spray caught the sun between them, and the whole lot ran down the bank toward the coal wharf like someone had drawn a path for her and left it there.

So when you see a trail of stars going down a body, Nell, that's a lamp-lit path somebody once walked by feel in bad weather. Now, the lamp on the stern. Go and check it's still burning, and don't tell your mother I let you out past the lock.