Black and grey tattoos on two forearms: the word Amore in script on one wrist, a fine line world map and a shaded compass rose, with a real brown butterfly perched on the arm.

Amore script, world map and compass on forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown against blurred green foliage. The word Amore is written in a flowing black script on the wrist, the world map is drawn in a fine single-line outline on the forearm, and a compass rose with solid black and grey points sits below it. A brown butterfly with eye-spot markings rests on the arm beside the compass.

Lettering Fine line Blackwork Forearm Script World map Compass Compass rose Butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the bench only bites before noon," said old Mirela, to nobody in particular, because the queue at Vrata had gone quiet and somebody had to fill it. "You want the story of the brown butterfly, or the one about the compass? They are the same story. My cousin Ilinka carried both across the ridge in 1979, and neither of them had a passport."

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She had a map of the world traced on tracing paper and folded into her coat, every coastline drawn in one unbroken pen line, because she said a border was only a line someone had forgotten to finish. The compass was her father's, its brass gone green at the rim and its needle long dead. He had told her the north on it was a promise, not a fact. On the morning of the crossing a butterfly came out of the mist and settled on her wrist, wings open, four round eyes staring up at the sentry as if it knew his job better than he did.

The sentry was a boy from the next village with a moustache he was proud of. He asked what she had to declare. Ilinka wrote one word on the form in careful capitals: AMORE. He frowned and asked if it was a product. She said it was the reason. He stamped the page, not because he understood, but because the butterfly would not leave her arm and he did not want to be the man who sent it flying back into the mist.

When she reached the far side, she noticed the compass had swung on its cord to point back the way she had come. Mirela's nephew still has the form. Under the word, in a different hand, the boy had written the name of his village and a question mark, as if he meant to go there one day and find out what the north was for.