Black fine line arrow tattoo running from the ankle along the outer side of a bare foot, with shaded fletching at the tail.

Arrow tattoo on the ankle and foot

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A black arrow tattoo runs diagonally from the ankle along the outer edge of a bare foot, with the point towards the sole and the fletching near the ankle. The linework is thin and clean, with hatched shading on the feathers and a small detailed binding at the shaft. The image is in natural light against a textured beige carpet, with blue jeans cuffed above the ankle.

Fine line Ankle Arrow Feather Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gale had snapped a halyard on the Mary Vell two hours before you were sent for, and by the time you reached the breakwater the crew were shouting into the wind with nobody who could throw a line that far. Your father's bench sat at the back of the chandlery on Tallow Lane, and he had made you learn fletching before you could tie a bowline, so it was you who ran back up the lane for the bow.

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The bow was ash, older than the harbour wall, strung with gut you had waxed three times that week. You picked a shaft from the bundle by the stove, straight-grained and cut in April, and bound the nock the way he taught you, three tight turns and a half hitch, while Mrs Penhallow held the lantern steady on the bench. The feathers were grey hen, barred and glued flat, and you shaded their edges with fine hatched strokes of ink so the vanes would read true even in the dark.

From the end of the groyne the boat was only a black shape rocking among the masts. You drew, breathed out, and let the arrow go high over the rigging so the trailing twine would fall across the deck. It dropped into a coil of rope at the foot of the mainmast. A boy no older than you untied the twine with his teeth and hauled the heavier line across, hand over hand, until the wind let go of the boat.

By dawn the fletching was torn and the shaft was split, and the head had come back up the rope in the boy's pocket. Your father said nothing when you came in. He took the bow from your hands, ran a thumb along the nock, and laid a fresh shaft on the bench. Then he pushed the iron point across the wood towards you, and you wrapped it in a rag and kept it in your coat, because it had gone further than anything you had ever made.