Black linework tattoo of an arrow above a compass star inside a circle, on the upper arm, in a geometric fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow and compass star on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black outline arrow runs up the upper arm, with a compass star inside a fine circle at its centre and a small open triangle at the tip of the shaft. The star's points and the arrowhead are filled with fine parallel hatching, while the shaft and circle are single clean lines. The design is entirely black ink against pale skin, with the subject photographed from the side against a white brick wall.

Geometric Fine line Upper arm Arrow Compass Star Circle Triangle Geometric shape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has taken the top field entirely by four o'clock, and you are the only one who thinks the ewes are still out there. Dad's torch is dying in your coat pocket and the wind is pushing the flakes sideways into your eyes, so you stop by the gate post and take out the brass compass your grandfather left on the hall table, the one whose lid snaps shut like a purse. The needle swings, shivers, settles. North should be where the hedge is, though you can't see the hedge.

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You count the fence wires instead, the old way he taught you: ten strands of barbed wire from the gate to the corner, then right, then fifteen paces along the gully where the drainage pipe runs under. At each post you tap the glass against the wood as though it might answer. The star engraved on the lid has its fine lines cut into every point, and he used to say a star like that meant you could never be properly lost so long as you kept one eye on the arrow of the needle and the other on your feet.

Near the bottom of the field you hear them before you see them, a small irritated bleating under the drifts. Three ewes are wedged in the lee of the stone wall, breath hanging in grey clouds, and one of them has the look of a creature that has been waiting for someone with sense. You get a hand under the nearest and it staggers up. The others follow your boots along the line of the wire, one after another, as neat as stitches.

In the yard the kitchen window is yellow through the steam on the glass. Your mum opens the door before you knock and says you took your time. You tell her the compass did most of the thinking, and she laughs and says the compass never walked a single step, and you put the brass thing back on the hall table where it belongs, lid open, needle still trembling towards home.