Two forearms with wrists turned towards the viewer: a fine line black arrow on the left arm and a fine line feather in teal and muted pink on the right arm, both on the inner forearm.

Arrow and feather tattoos on two forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two inked forearms are shown with the wrists turned towards the camera, the sleeves of a denim shirt rolled up above them. The left forearm has a thin, single-line arrow running vertically, shaded in dark ink. The right forearm has a feather drawn in fine linework with teal, muted pink and dark detailing, set against a plain outdoor paved background.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The goose feathers came up from Romney Marsh in a sack that smelled of wet salt, and I sorted them on the bench by the window the way my mother taught me. Left wings to the left pile, right wings to the right. A feather turned the wrong way will make an arrow spin off true before it has gone twenty yards, and she never let a shaft leave the shop with a crooked fletch, however much the gentry complained about the price.

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My brother Tom came in that October with his bow over one shoulder and mud to his knees, wanting six arrows for the shoot at Lydd. He had lost four already in the hedgerows. He said the gentlemen didn't care how straight a shaft was, only that it looked the part. I told him the gentlemen had never had to dig a ruined arrow out of a ditch. I cut the feathers to a fine point, bound them with waxed thread, and dyed the tips the colour of a pigeon's throat, teal and a dull rose, because Tom liked things he could pick out from a long way off.

At the butts the next morning the wind came in off the sea and tugged at every shaft. Tom loosed five and four of them flew wide, into the gorse and the stubble. The sixth went straight down the lane, a thin dark line against the bright grass, and struck the mark so cleanly the fletch barely seemed to tremble.

He brought that last arrow back to the shop at dusk, the feathers still whole, and hung it on the nail above my bench. Later, when I swept up, one loose barb drifted off the sorting pile and settled on the floor. It was a right wing, and I left it lying there.