Fine line black script reading Spirit, lead me, with a small arrow above it, on the inner upper arm of a person with the arm raised.

Arrow and script quote on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black arrow with decorative fletching sits above a cursive line of script that reads Spirit, lead me. The linework is fine and even, with the lettering set in a flowing hand and the arrow drawn with small dots and curls along its shaft. The tattoo sits on the inner upper arm, shown against a dim indoor room with the arm raised and the wearer's face not visible.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Arrow Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, and keep your boots off the sand while it's still warm from the day. The story is short, but the road is long, and you'll want something to chew on while you walk it.

Keep reading

There was a carrier called Osei Amankwah who drove mules between the salt pans and the far wells, and he had a habit I never understood. Before every crossing he fletched one arrow, a plain cane shaft with a diamond of red copper at the head, and shot it straight ahead of the lead mule. Wherever it came to ground, the line turned. Nobody argued with an arrow.

One year the dust came up in a wall so thick the lamps went out at noon. Three men, two boys and a widow with forty goats were lost with him. He pressed the arrow into the hand of the youngest boy and said, 'Shoot it where you think the road is, then say the words your mother taught you.' The boy had only a song about a goat. So he sang it, and then he shouted, 'Spirit, lead me,' because that was what the old man had murmured under his breath all his life.

The arrow dropped in the sand a hundred paces off. They walked to it through the blindness with their hands linked like beads on a string, and found the well's stone lip under their fingers an hour before dawn. I always tell the children that the arrow was not the miracle. The boy was the one who kept walking after he could no longer see it.