Black linework tattoo of a sun symbol with a solid ring and four groups of three rays, on the side of a ribcage.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Zia sun symbol on the ribs

Geometric · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tattoo of a ring with four groups of three parallel lines extending outward in a cross shape, set on the side of the torso over the ribs. The lines and ring are solid, even black ink with no shading, on pale skin. The design is centred on the ribs and fills most of the frame, with a dark top and blue denim visible at the edges.

Geometric Ribs Circle Ray Line Cross

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, the fiddler is only tuning, and he has been tuning since supper. Pass that jug down to Ruben before he starts on the goat again. You want the story of the painted sun over the door? Then listen, because I will tell it once and the floor will be full before I finish. My grandfather's brother ran this hall when it still had a tin roof that rang in the rain. He painted that sun on the lintel himself, a ring with four strokes of three reaching out to the points, because he said a sun that does not reach out is only a lamp.

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One August a dry wind came off the mesa and stayed three weeks. The well at Cañon Seco went to mud, then to nothing, and the families came up the road in wagons with their pots tied to the sides. Walter, that was his name, gave them the hall to sleep in. Every night he went out to the lintel with a lantern and touched the rays, counting them the way you count children at a fiesta, one, two, three, all of them still there. People laughed at him. Then they stopped laughing, because the wind did shift in September, and nobody could say his counting had not moved it.

When the rain came, a girl named Inés asked him why the rays ran in threes and not in fours. He said a sun gives you what it has, and a family gives you what it can carry, and three is what you can carry up a hill on your back. She thought that was foolish and told him so. He laughed until he coughed, then took her out onto the boards while the sky was still wet and the whole town stamped in time.

So that is the sun. Four directions, three strokes to each, one ring to hold it all together. When you go out tonight, look up at it and count. Don't tell me the number. Just make sure you can still find the door.