Black outline flash design of three moons in a row, a waxing crescent, a full circle and a waning crescent, with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Triple moon line design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a simple black outline drawing of three moon phases arranged in a horizontal row: a crescent on the left, a full circle in the centre and a mirrored crescent on the right. The linework is uniform and bold on a plain white background, with no shading. The composition is symmetrical and centred, reading as a stencil-style flash design.

Geometric Moon Crescent Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stair at Caddon Keep had lost its third step to frost the winter I turned eleven, so every night since I have counted my way up past the gap with one hand on the cold wall. Grandmother said you never climbed to the leads without counting. Three moons, she told me, and you read them in order, left to right, the way you read a page, or you read nothing at all.

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The first was always the thin paring over the eastern curtain wall, barely a nail-paring of light. The second hung above the chapel roof, round and heavy as a bell. The last slid in behind the yews, a bent bow going under. I kept the tally in the back of the tithe ledger in pencil, because the ink had dried to a crust years ago, and I never once missed a night until the spring Tam brought the key.

He stood at the top of the stair with the chapel key in one fist and a candle guttering in the other, and said the vicar's men were coming in the morning to board up the leads for good. He wanted me to come down and say goodbye to the bells. I said I had a count to finish. He laughed and said the moons would keep. I told him that was exactly what Grandmother used to say about the dead.

I watched the three of them go over, in order, every one. Then I opened the ledger and wrote the dates as she taught me, and under the last one I drew a small black ring, round and unfinished, for the night I let the waning moon go without anyone to read it to.