Black and white photo of a fine line tattoo of four arrows in a cross shape on a lower leg, with sand dusted over the skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow cross tattoo on a lower leg

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a lower leg near the ankle, with sand clinging to the skin. The tattoo is a large arrow pointing up, down and to each side, forming a cross, with three small arrowheads placed between the lines. The linework is thin and dark, with little shading, and the image is greyscale. The subject sits centrally in the frame against soft, out-of-focus sand.

Fine line Calf Arrow Cross Compass Sand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ines,

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The tide took the chart again last night, so I am writing this on the back of the ferry timetable while the kettle goes cold beside me. Mr Abernethy says the arrows are not a compass at all, whatever the hotel brochures print. He says they are a rule for the wind: point north and the gulls will mind you, point east and the boats come home. I have stopped arguing with him, since he is ninety and has never once been wrong about weather.

Yesterday I drew the cross in the sand below the harbour wall, the long lines for the four quarters and three little barbed heads tucked between them where the wind comes off the cliffs. I did it to show Tomas what I meant about the fog. He walked straight across it with his boots full of grit and said the arrows were pointing at nothing, and that is the trouble with men who know exactly where they are going.

Then the afternoon went strange. A woman from the mainland came down the slipway with a sketchbook and asked whether she could copy it. She had sand caught in the dunes of her coat and laughed when I told her the lines would be gone by morning. She said that was the point. Her pencil stopped on the eastern arrow for a long while.

I walked out at dusk and the marks were already softening. Only the heads were left, pressed a little deeper than the rest. I have decided those are the directions I will trust. Come over in June and I will show you where they point.

Love, Nell